My Effect: Convergence
by Lanilen
Summary: My disappointment with the original ending of Mass Effect 3 was, I think, shared by many. At the time I thought I had to do something about it. What I didn't expect was for my wish to be granted by being transplanted into the Mass Effect universe, where I had to fix an awful lot more than I expected. A phrase about writing a check and having to pay came to mind...
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes: **Welcome to my sparkling brand-new fanfic, one of two, featuring... me! I finally bit the bullet and decided to go for the obligatory self-insert that seems to be so popular in the Mass Effect fandom. Featuring action, drama, incompetence, and following along the game plot – with a few twists, to keep things fresh.

The idea for this fic was straightforward enough. Being transplanted into the Mass Effect universe, as things start to go South and the reapers make their move, is probably the most common self-insert. I have a few ideas to keep the reading fresh, and unpredictable. To a point :)

I had another idea, where plot diverges very strongly, and which I will be putting up – and writing – in parallel to this one. I figured hey, it's my fanfic page, why the heck not? Double dose of ego feeding. If you'd like to read something quite different from the plot-following self-inserts, that may be more your thing. "My Effect: Divergence".

One of the most distinctive features of this fic, I think, will be me.

…

Yeah, that sounded better in my head, let me explain. By the time you're done with chapter, dunno, say five, you'll probably feel a strong urge to stab my incompetent face. That's normal. While everyone likes their self-insert to do well in whatever it is they're writing, I figured a more... _candid _representation of how things usually go down for me, while in the Mass Effect universe, would be more entertaining to the reader. And serve as a good plot device to all the changes that are going to happen due to my meddlesome self.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. And thanks for reading!

* * *

><p>Red explosions. That's what I got; red explosions which magically turned all the reapers off, destroyed every relay, and then some nonsense about the Normandy crash landing on a planet and all that.<p>

Holy hell. Suddenly, all the crying and gnashing of teeth on the internet made sense. This was worse than the end of Knights of the Old Republic II. And that's saying something! And I was watching it in glorious HD, sixty inches of 1080p and 5.1 surround sound.

"Holy hell, what a disaster."

I took to the internet as I reloaded, and started perusing the official forums. It wasn't my first look, but I had tried to stay a little away from it until I was done with the game. For what I could see, some people liked the end. A _lot_ more were up in arms.

"Shit, who can blame them?" I muttered, looking at the pages and pages of unshackled bitching.

Meanwhile, I had re-done the final bit, and my TV was blaring with green explosions. Green. I watched it go for a few seconds, I wasn't sure whether I had chosen a different end, or just my TV was having colour schizophrenia. But when Joker hobbled off the Normandy, followed by EDI, I saw it was indeed a different ending.

"How the hell can this be an ending?" I yelled at the TV. "Shepard choosing to overwrite the whole galaxy's living beings because he says so? You can't be serious! He'd never do that! And it looks the bloody same!"

A deep breath later, and I had calmed down. I _really_ didn't want to throw the controller at the TV. Damn, that was bad. I wondered whether they were rushed by EA to finish it no matter what, and ended up with _that._

As I read the forums, I hit several posts with people re-writing the endings. From small paragraphs to full-blown fanfics. That was an idea. I could _fix _that. Of course, not that I was thinking I could _actually_ fix anything; while I think highly of myself there is a limit to my hubris.

I think.

Sinking into the sofa, I put my legs up, and then put the laptop on my actual lap.

"Okay, okay, I can fix this," I muttered. I fired up LibreOffice, and started thinking. And as I often do when thinking, I started talking to myself out loud. Yeah, I do get a lot of looks, specially because I think better when I'm on my feet, so I'll be taking a walk on the park, and muttering to myself half the time.

I'm thinking of getting some really old clothes for when I go out. It'll probably help. And be amusing.

"Okay, what do we have? The starchild." I took one of my paper pads, and wrote that down. "That's got to go. I mean seriously, it's a literal _deus ex machina_, no foreshadowing, nothing, and all it does is talk _to _the player."

I crossed the starchild on the paper. It felt better than it should have.

"Then the reapers," I wrote them down. "Do we even need to know _why_ the reapers do what they do?" I stopped to think about it, and came to a realization. I was lacking on background here. I took the paper and wrote down a note next to the reapers – _read __more__ Lovecraft_.

So really, it came down to the organics vs. synthetics hoopla, and the Reapers being somewhere in between.

"Maybe it's all about the conflict. The reapers show up and win unless organics and synthetics stand together. Maybe that could work."

I jotted it down. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Okay, I can fix this," I said again. "What about the rest of the game? If all that happens is that the relays blow up... Heck, that pretty much makes the rest of the game pointless." I was reminded of the Star Control games. Yeah, if only Mass Effect 3 had been more like those. A dynamic fight for the galaxy somehow.

But that was beyond the scope of a fic. I'm not a games designer, and not much of a writer to begin with – I do fanfics, after all. I'm good at other stuff, which pays the bills.

"I can fix this," I muttered. I was feeling rather sleepy, which really shouldn't have been surprising. I had stayed up waaaay too late. It happens, once one smells the ending coming, it's hard to just wait. Maybe I had poor self control.

I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but I came up with a very vivid dream. The inside of a spaceship, I could tell as much. There were stars outside, and some of them were moving. Not in a "starfield screensaver" kind of way. They were drifting along in several different directions.

"Are you sure?"

It was a feminine voice. Then the owner came into view, not sure if I turned or not. Dreams feel funny that way, and not in a "cannibal asks another if the clown tastes funny" kind of way. She was... I couldn't quite make the features. White. White hair, pale skin, blue eyes – bright blue – kinda almost glowing.

Somehow, I knew what she meant. Mass Effect. Well, it was my dream, so it was hardly a surprise I knew what she meant.

"Sure. It's really not hard to come up with a better way to end it."

She smiled. Then there was a bang, and I woke up.

The first thing I noticed was that I was laying on the ground. Weird, I didn't remember falling off the sofa (I mean, duh!). The second thing I noticed was that the ground was really hard, which is odd because I have very thick carpet all through my house. And a quick look told me I wasn't in the kitchen or the bathroom. In fact, a quick look told me I had no clue where I was.

I was pretty sure I hadn't been out drinking. Even if I had been out drinking, I've never woken up in a place I didn't know – I really don't drink that much. Taking a look around, it looked like I was in one of those shipping containers, reconverted into a house. A bed, a seat and a table, and odd-looking locker of some sort...

_Wait a minute._

Before I could put that somewhat muddled thought in order with my sleep-addled brain, another bang like the one I had dreamed of rang through the air. Then more of them, and screams.

I rushed out of the container, and found myself face-first with a whole mob of people running around like headless chickens. I didn't notice at first, but they were dressed weird.

"What the hell's going on?" I yelled. I'm all for headless chicken running, but first I'd rather know the reason for it. Makes it more fun.

"We're under attack!" someone yelled back.

Any chance of making out who had said that was cut short when an explosion rocked the whole mob. I had never seen a large explosion up close, and I had definitely never been thrown back by a close explosion. I was completely lost for several seconds, my ears were ringing, and everything was spinning.

When I got my bearings back I saw I was one of the lucky ones. There were body parts strewn around, and a hell of a lot of blood too.

I was so shocked, I didn't even move. All I could do was look at the carnage, like my brain couldn't quite make out what was happening. The illusion broke when some sort of ungodly roar sounded from the distance, loud enough that it caught everyone's attention. Everyone who was still in one piece.

That's when I turned and saw it. Shrouded in clouds and red lightning, a deep black, large enough that it towered way above the distant buildings.

A fucking Reaper.

I knew. I didn't know why, or how, but I knew. I knew it was _real_. I knew it was a Reaper. I just knew it.

Mass Effect.

_"Are you sure?"_

The words from my dream came back to mind. With the image of that girl, woman, whatever. Someone had put me in the Mass Effect universe.

And the Reaper. The image started to make sense in my head. I had seen this before, although with worse textures. Eden Prime.

Eden Prime, the day Sovereign attacked. And that massive black ship in the distance was Sovereign himself.

"That pale glowing _bitch!_" I shouted. "Why the fuck did-"

New screams interrupted my pointless tirade. And the sound that I came to recognize as gunfire. Futuristic, mass accelerated gunfire.

"What are those things?" someone shouted.

The flashlight heads were quite the clue. "Those are geth," I said. And without another word, I turned around and ran. If it isn't obvious why, think more geth than you can shake a stick at, me unarmed and unarmoured, and not a clue what to do.

Ever heard that thing about being attacked by bears? You don't have to be faster than the bears, just faster than the other people running from the bears. Not that I was thinking about that, because all I was thinking was that I had to get the _hell_ out of dodge. Until Shepard arrived.

_Shepard. Dammit, where the hell is he? He didn't show up until the colony was beaten up I think._

I did put some distance between me and the trouble. I may not look like it, but at 6'2", I have long legs, so I can really make hay when I have to. I stopped only when I thought my legs were about to buckle under me, and I couldn't take another step to save my life. Literally.

"Dammit," I muttered, between fast and heavy breaths. I had no idea where I was, there was noone around that I could see. No geth, no colonists, nothing. A few buildings around, and the one I had stopped in front of caught my eye. I stumbled inside with unsteady steps, it was another one of those container-like prefab buildings, only this one was a lot bigger. And packed with stuff. Several lockers lined up one of the walls, tables, benches, it even had proper rooms, with a shower at the back.

The lockers were locked, ironically enough. All except for one. I don't know what I expected to find, guns and armor maybe. That's what one always finds in the game when looking inside containers. I mean, you could be exploring a fifty thousand year old prothean ruin on a planet that has been cut off from the rest of the galaxy since the rachni wars, and the next container you open there will have a shiny new Tsunami shotgun waiting for you.

That makes sense.

In the meantime, I found that the locker _did _have a suit of armor, and a gun. A pistol, at that. I chuckled softly when I saw it, because it really shouldn't have surprised me at all.

"Well, at least I can get myself some protection," I said as I took the armor out of its place in the locker. Several pieces fell on the floor, which really put the situation in perspective. I had _no_ clue how to put that thing on properly. Also, it was pink. Well, white and pink. "Goddammit, this is Ashley's armor!" I said, rooting through the pieces. To my relief, there was no boob armor. It wasn't Ashley's, but it was the same type.

And yes, it was in pieces.

"Okay, okay, calm down," I said out loud again. "There's got to be a manual somewhere on how to put armor on."

There wasn't. I tried several parts, first the boots and the gloves, which I realized was not going to work over my clothes. So I got down to my T-shirt and boxers, and started again. Chest piece, then started trying to attach the extremities. When I fastened the left glove, a big glowing thing popped out of nowhere, and I may or may not have made a sound like a little girl squeaking.

It was just an omni-tool, which was really cool. I got distracted by it for a few seconds, but since I couldn't figure out the functions, I went back to putting my pink armor back on, this time starting with the helmet. Immediately, the HUD blinked to life, and a message flashed atop the visor.

_Please connect to omni-tool for additional functions._

"Uh, what?" I muttered.

I flicked the omni-tool on (which took me a few tries, and must have looked hilarious from the outside, me poking and prodding my left gauntlet trying to bring the thing to life), and started looking for the right option. Nope. There were a lot of options in that thing, I managed to find the _VI suit synchronization_ menu, but I couldn't figure it out. A red dot started flashing on a corner of the hud, I changed the colours of the display, and even shuffled a few things around, but it wasn't actually syncing.

Whatever. I had a small diagram of the armor in a corner, with like half the joints in red – which I assumed meant they weren't properly fastened – as well as all the missing parts, and a gauge for the kinetic barrier. It didn't look like the ones in the games, so I had no idea how good my kinetic barrier was.

I was concentrating on trying to get the thing going so much that a whole platoon of geth could have walked in and I wouldn't have noticed.

Which is why I nearly jumped out of my armor when a roar of rushing air passing overhead sent the shabby construction shaking. There were some shooting sounds outside, and stupid me – me, who was not particularly familiar with what to do in a warzone – rushed out to see what was going on.

Then I saw her. Overhead, just caught a glimpse of her as she flew by. It was enough to recognize the sleek lines.

The _Normandy_.

I probably would have stood there like an idiot watching it until a geth shot me in the head, but it disappeared fast enough that I didn't have time for it. What I did hear was the sound of fighting, close enough that I could follow it. And when I turned towards the sound, I could see the combatants. Geth, of course, and... a turian.

It was also my first time seeing a turian. Not that I saw him for long, he disappeared just as fast as the Normandy had.

Now, I could say that I was too shocked to do anything. But that'd be redundant, again. It was starting to become a habit. What _really_ happened is that I realized, as soon as he was gone, who it was.

That was Nihlus.

If Nihlus was there, the worst of the attack had passed. The geth were probably on their way to the spaceport to get the beacon, and-

"Oh crap, Saren! He's going to kill him!"

I went back inside and threw the last pieces of armor on, fastening them in whatever way I could. The shots in the distance reminded me I was on the clock, and that Nihlus was about to get his face blown off. I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea, I wasn't even _thinking_ about deciding whether it was a good idea or not. Thinking about canon and whatnot really wasn't something I could do while in the middle of a geth attack.

I took the pistol from the locker, and made sure it worked – it unfolded automatically, and it didn't take me long to find the safety – and off I went. I had shot a pistol before about three times in my life, and always at the range. Shotguns, I had used more often, but hunting shotguns of the 21st century are probably not quite the same as the ones in the Mass Effect universe. But that pistol was the only gun I had found, so I took it. Clipping it to my right tight was easy enough, the magnetic clip worked without having to do anything.

And I ran. Again. The armor was freaking heavy, so all I could really do was jog. I always thought that the way the games don't let you sprint for more than a few meters was rather stupid, since Shepard's probably quite capable of running a very long distance. But with how heavy this armor was, it started to make more sense. And it freaking rattled too.

_Dammit Jim, I'm just some guy, not an athlete!_

It was a good thing that the guns in this futuristic universe were so freaking loud, because I didn't have the first clue as to where I was. As it turned out, the Eden Prime colony near the spaceport looks nothing like it did in the game. Lots more buildings, actual streets, and people. A lot more dead people.

I tried very hard not to look at the dead. When I came across the first set of dragon's teeth with human corpses impaled on them, I had to stop to throw up.

If you think the dragon's teeth don't look particularly scary or intimidating in the games, then be thankful for low resolution textures and polygonal models. Because in real life – if this was truly _real life_ – the whole thing is sickeningly grotesque. And the smell. Dear sweet triforce, the smell! I moved away from them as soon as I was done heaving, and moved on. I had yet to see a single living geth, but there were quite a few broken ones.

Nihlus' handiwork, I hoped.

My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the turian in the distance, talking with a couple of humans. He gestured towards one of the buildings, then took off running in a different direction.

"Nihlus!" I shouted. He didn't hear me, or didn't care, because he didn't stop. "Shit."

I kept my jog, despite the fact that I was starting to be out of breath. The two humans had seen me, and while they had gone inside the crappy prefab building Nihlus had pointed them to, they kept the door open, and were gesturing for me to come too. It was two of them, a man and a woman

"Are you with the garrison?" the woman said as soon as I got to the door.

"No," I replied, speaking between gasps. "Why?"

"Well..." She looked me up and down, leaving the obvious answer hanging in the air.

"No, I just found this stuff. When the geth attacked. Dammit, where did the turian go?"

"He said he was going to find the beacon. Come in, we should be safe here."

"There is no safe place," the man interrupted. "None of us are safe. We will be judged today."

I looked at him, and everything clicked. It had been a while since I played Mass Effect one, but those two I remembered. Some guy that had gone crazy, and a random colonist. In the game they were just filler; here, they were two very scared survivors.

"Just stay in there. Which way to the spaceport?"

"Wha..." She seemed surprised by my question, but she recovered quickly. "Just go down the hill, you can't miss it. The tram will take you there."

"Great, thanks. Lock this thing and stay down."

I heard the door swish closed behind me as I legged it towards the tram. Luckily it was all downhill, so it was easy enough to do it despite the extra weight. That part of the colony was pretty much as it was in game. Downhill, a weird looking platform... and two turians talking on it.

_Saren._

He was easy enough to recognize, that with being taller, grey, evil-looking, and half machine pretty much. They were talking, then Nihlus looked away while Saren moved behind him. He drew his pistol.

"Fuck," I said, and got my pistol out. I was way too far, had been running, and was breathing really hard, but I had to try. "Nihlus!" I shouted, then started shooting.

I was not sure whether it was the luckiest moment of my life, but it had to rank up there. The very first shot I fired hit Saren right on the arm. Not that it made it past his shields, but it threw his aim off, and the bullet that was destined for Nihlus skull ended up shooting wide and far.

When Saren turned to look at me I felt my stomach tightening. Sure, he was pretty far, but I knew what that bastard was capable of. If the games were anything to go by, which at that point I was pretty sure they were. I mean, duh.

Luckily, Nihlus was a much more pressing danger. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but Nihlus had gotten his shotgun out, and they were shooting each other with real glee. I kept running until I was too close for comfort, and hid behind a crate when the first bullet pinged my shields.

And pretty much took them down.

"Saren!" I heard Nihlus shout. That was the only thing I could understand really, I had no idea what he was shouting, but Saren wasn't uttering a single peep. More shots. I was waiting for my shield gauge to fill up again, and it was taking forever.

After a coupe of seconds my shield was full again, and although I really wasn't relishing the prospect of sticking my neck out, I was pretty sure I had little choice. Like an idiot, I had gotten myself in the middle of a firefight, and Saren wasn't going to stop until Nihlus was dead – and me with him. He didn't want witnesses.

Now, if only Shepard would show up, between his squad and Nihlus, maybe they could take Saren down.

_Shit, that could end the game right here._

A couple of pellets landing by my feet reminded me not to count my chickens before breaking the eggs to make the omelette, which was as mixed-up a metaphor as I was feeling at the time. With a deep breath, I peeked over the side of the crate, found where Saren was taking cover, and without much hesitation I brought my pistol up and fired as fast as I could until the gun overheated.

All I accomplished was letting Saren know where I was, and getting a look from Nihlus, which I had no idea how to interpret. I got back in cover, and hunkered down even lower when a bullet clipped the crate right above my head.

"Saren!" Nihlus shouted again.

There was no answer, but out of the corner of my cover I saw a bright flash of blue light, and then, all hell broke loose. Crates were tossed around left and right, and Nihlus and I went with them. I hit the railing painfully with my hip, and tumbled over, falling a good five meters to land on my back.

Goddamit, it hurt like a bitch. Assuming said bitch had been tossed around by biotics, cracked her hip on a metal railing, and fallen to the hard floor from a good height.

Then, I heard shots above me. I cursed and groaned, trying to get up. My entire body was protesting against my brilliant idea of standing up and wandering off after the fall, but those two shots had sounded very ominous. I realized there were even more shots now, an honest to goodness firefight.

"Dammit! He's running away!" I heard a female voice shouting.

"There's too many of them." A male.

"Commander, wait!" A different female. I probably could have deduced who was who, given my knowledge of how things went in the game, but as it was I was too focused on getting moving.

The cavalry had arrived.

As the sounds of battle died down, I managed to get up the ramp, and what was waiting on the other side just blew my mind. Nihlus was on the ground, with two people in full armor fussing over him. One of them was wearing a black armor with a red and white detail on the right arm. But the shocking part was how everything had been blown to hell atop the platform. And I mean even worse than it was before. Like Saren had dropped a fucking bomb, and cleared the area with it.

The third person I recognized immediately because she wasn't wearing a helmet. Ashley Williams. The same pink armor we all remember, black hair held in a bun. She looked a lot like the games, but, well, _real. _I probably would have considered her attractive at the time, except that she looked at me for a moment with a sort of surprised expression, and then her face contorted into an angry snarl.

Before I could react, she charged at me, hit me on the stomach hard enough I doubled over, then slammed me on the floor face first.

"Don't move!" she shouted, and pressed something to the back of my head. Which turned out to be a gun, and I didn't even need three guesses to figure out. "Who the fuck are you?"

_Great first impression_, was all I could think.


	2. Chapter 2

Being pinned to the ground with a gun to the back of my head was a new experience for me. The only thing that really kept me from panicking was the fact that I was too stunned by the previous fight to really put together what was happening. Shepard had to be in that lot, and she wouldn't just shoot me in the back.

Would she?

_Please don't be a Renegade, please don't be a Renegade..._

"Chief?" a female voice called.

"Commander, he's wearing one of our suits, but he's not in the 212," Ash's reply came. "Where did you get it? Who did you kill for it, huh? Are you working with the geth?"

"What? No!" I replied. "I just took this off a locker! In an empty building! I- Ack!" I yelped when she yanked my left arm behind my back, and twisted it around. I heard a series of beeps, and then she let me go.

"It's one of the spares," Ashley finally said.

I ventured a look over my shoulder, and saw that Ash had taken a step back, and was no longer pointing her gun at me.

Great start. Let's take a look at my experience so far:

_What? What? What? What? Run! Lucky! Ow! **OW!** Ow!_

Yeah. I was so lost I was probably going to be eaten by a grue. And if you got that reference, you're awesome.

"Are you okay?"

I stopped my trip down memory lane recounting my last string of disasters and looked up. N7 armor, helmet removed. Yep, that was Shepard. Female, blonde, short curly hair, somewhat gaunt appearance with high cheekbones and slightly sunken cheeks, clear eyes I couldn't quite decide the colour of, somewhere between blue, gray, or green, and a very prominent scar making a crescent on the side and under her right eye.

"I've been better," I replied, and suppressed a groan when I turned and tried to stand up. Shepard offered me a hand, and pulled me up to my feet so quick she had to hold me back so I wouldn't tumble over and onto my face again.

Once I was stable, she gave me a slap on the shoulder and let go of me.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Elizabeth Shepard," she said. "The charming lady is Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams," she pointed at Ash, who was still giving me the stink eye, "and the handsome devil is Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko," she pointed, and Alenko rolled his eyes before going back to working on Nihlus.

Right, Nihlus. He was alive, and there was quite a bit of blue blood under him, but Alenko didn't seem too worried.

"You know, it's polite to introduce oneself after someone does the same," Shepard said.

"Oh! Sorry commander. Roy Morgan."

"Uh-huh. Rank, soldier?"

"No, no, I'm not..."

"Then cut the _commander_ crap. It's Shepard." She had been smiling until then, but her smile faded when she came to the next question. "So what are you doing here?"

_Crap._

I had been so focused on the whole "chase after the turian" thing, that I hadn't stopped to think about what story I was going to give Shepard & Co. I looked at her, at Ash (who seemed to take my hesitation as a chance to give me an even more evil glare), at Nihlus, and tried to come up with something on the spot.

Which probably wouldn't work. I'm a terrible liar.

"Uh, well, there's geth all over the place, and then came this turian armed to the teeth and blowing flashlight heads left and right," I said, pointing at Nihlus. "I figured staying close was the best way to stay alive."

"Uh-huh," Shepard replied, sounding pretty dubious about it.

The only distraction I could think of was Nihlus. "How is he?"

"Fine," Nihlus replied.

"Couple of holes," Kaidan said, wiping his hands clean of the blue blood. "He's in no danger. We should signal the Normandy for pickup."

For an answer, Nihlus sat up, "I'm fine," he snapped – almost literally, since he was a turian.

Like she had done with me, Shepard offered him a hand, while smirking mischievously. "I never thought I'd see a toaster getting the best out of a Spectre. Makes me have second thoughts about joining your little club."

"It wasn't the geth," he rumbled. At the time I didn't realize, but that growl he gave was a very clear signal not to mess with him. Kaidan and Ash both seemed to take the hint, and put a couple of steps between them and the turian.

Shepard wasn't fazed.

"No, no, they're definitely geth. See, the flashlight head is a dead giveaway."

"Commander..." Kaidan whispered.

"It was Saren!" Nihlus shouted, turning to face Shepard and getting on her face. Quite literally, he was less than an inch from her.

She didn't budge, move, or even blink. She kept her smile on, and all she did was quirk an eyebrow up. After a few seconds, Nihlus backed off, but didn't break eye contact.

"So, Saren?"

"Another Spectre," Nihlus grumbled. As if he had just remembered, he turned to me, which made me twitch in place. "Thanks, by the way," he grumbled.

"No problem," I said.

"Well, we have a beacon to find," Shepard replied. "We can talk about this later. Roy," she turned to me, "you better stay here, we've got this covered. The geth are retreating, you should be safe."

"Comman- Shepard. I'm coming with you."

Everyone, and I mean _everyone, _turned to look at me. For a moment I thought the dead geth had turned their flashlight heads at me, hidden colonists had come out of hiding just to catch a glimpse of my stupid face, and Sovereign's own evil eye had turned on its giant tentacled head to me.

_Say something, say something!_

"Look, there's geth everywhere. I'd rather be close to the scary people with all the guns."

"We don't have time to babysit you," Ash said. Jeez, when did she become such a bitch?

"Okay, then don't," I said, and shrugged.

"Can you actually use that?" Shepard said, pointing at the folded pistol on my tight.

"Commander!" Ashley protested, but she clammed up when Shepard raised one hand without even turning to her.

"Yeah, but I'm better with a shotgun. Used them for hunting."

"Hunting with shotguns?" Ash said.

"Well, yeah, not these though. You know, bird shot, gunpowder... Well, that's not right. They don't technically use gunpowder really, but you know what I mean. And... I'm babbling..." I finished lamely.

Because yeah, they were giving me the _looks_ again. Shepard just shook her head, and took the shotgun that was hanging on the small of her back. With some reluctance she handed it to me.

"You used propellant guns for hunting?" Alenko asked.

"Uh, yeah," I replied. I wasn't sure how much of a gaffe I had made, but the way they were looking at me was odd.

"Let's go, we have to get to the beacon," Shepard said, quickly ending the awkward moment. "Chief, you're point. Kaidan, with me. Roy, bring in the rear, and keep your head down. Nihlus?"

"I'm going on ahead," he replied. "I'm faster-"

"Not this time," Shepard interrupted. Nihlus growled at her, but she held firm. "We're sticking together."

"I'm going after Saren, Shepard. Don't get in my way."

"We're going after the beacon," Shepard said. She made a show of looking at Nihlus straight in the eye. "_That _is the mission."

"Don't tell me what the mission is! This is no longer about the beacon!"

"This is _all_ about the beacon," Shepard said. She didn't yell like Nihlus was doing, but somehow her voice seemed to carry stronger than the turian's. "We have a geth invasion and heavens know how many dead because of the _beacon_. So yes, I'll tell you what the mission is."

Nihlus growled, and leaned towards Shepard, but the commander didn't even blink. Maybe I was being too sensitive, but the last thing I wanted was for those two to come to blows.

"Excuse me," I said, and again I felt that tingle of fear as everyone turned to look at me. "If the beacon is that important, and this Saren is here for it, well... Shouldn't we go there and kill two birds with one stone?" When noone answered, I continued awkwardly. "We've got to get to the spaceport anyway, so there's no point trying to split here."

More silence. Never thought I would be, but I was glad for the sudden appearance of several geth breaking the very awkward scene. Everyone but me fell into cover almost instantly with perfect discipline, and I did so once a bullet hit my shields and pretty much knocked me down. I rolled behind a crate, realized I had dropped the shotgun, and pulled the pistol out with shaky hands.

By the time I had gathered my wits and leaned out of cover to find something to shoot at, the fight was done.

"Perimeter clear," Ash called.

"Let's get going," Shepard said, getting out of cover. "Nihlus, you've got point with Williams. Let's find that beacon, then we can think about your boyfriend."

Nihlus snarled, which I later figured out was him saying something in Turian – and since I didn't have a translator, I missed it completely – but he complied nonetheless. In fact, he pulled ahead quite quickly, making Ash have to haul ass to catch up to him. I saw that Alenko gave Shepard a look before taking off, and the commander waved him on.

_Shit. She's waiting for me._

I hung the pistol back on its place, and took the shotgun from the ground. When I was about to go on, Shepard put her hand on my chest to stop me. She was smirking.

"I appreciate the thought, Roy, but I'm quite capable of handling one hotheaded turian."

Despite her smile, her eyes were looking at me in a way that invited no argument.

"Okay," I said, as non-committally as I could.

"How did you know about the beacon?" she then said, losing her smile in the blink of an eye. The sudden change caught me completely off-guard, and it didn't occur to me at the time that it was exactly what she intended.

"Uh, well, it's..." I gestured around. "It's a small place, commander. You can't keep a secret like that in this tiny colony."

She narrowed her eyes, which made me clench my butt uncomfortably. Yeah, the glare was _that_ bad.

"And how do you know where it is now?"

"Uh, there's... These two up there, a woman and some crazy dude..." the fighting started again out in the distance. The others were already making towards the tram. "Shouldn't we go?"

She let the silence hang a little longer before nodding, releasing me from her imaginary grip. "We'll talk later." She then tapped my chest. "Stay back and keep your head down."

"Yes ma'am."

She shook her head and took off, running fast enough that I had trouble following despite being almost a head taller than her. Long legs aren't a match for N7 training, apparently.

As I had been instructed, I stayed at the back while the rest of the team fought the geth on the tram platform. There were a _lot_ of them, far more than I usually found in the game I think. And unlike the games, the flimsy cover of the random metal barriers and crates was _not_ bulletproof.

Needless to say, the _I'm so out of my depth I'm going to need a buoy and an oxygen tank_ feeling didn't diminish at all. I really couldn't shoot anything from the rear, given that I had no idea what the spread of the shotgun was, and there were a lot of friendlies between me and the geth. So I stuck to the back, and hoped nothing came from behind us.

About an eternity later (which turned out to be less than a minute, but minutes have a way of stretching when under geth fire), I heard a hum coming from behind us under the platform, and almost immediately a geth drone popped out of cover and started firing at us.

"Behind us!" I shouted. I brought the shotgun up and fired, and to my delight, the gun was actually good enough to put a healthy amount of ordinance through the drone even at the range I was. A second shot later, it exploded in midair. It was followed by a second drone, and then a third. "Drones!"

I heard Shepard call Alenko, but didn't get the details because I was in the middle of a full adrenalin rush. I'm not sure if it was a physical response, or just my brain, but I literally stopped hearing and noticing anything other than the drones in front of me. They were weak enough that my shotgun was working well through them, and after the fourth I took down it started feeling like I was just shooting clay pigeons again. Only they were bigger, and instead of flying away they floated right in front of me.

Oh, and they shot bullets too. But I was taking them fast enough that they were not getting past my shields.

So yeah, I was feeling cocky. So much so, that when the next drone showed up, I couldn't help myself.

"Pull!" I shouted with a grin. A moment later the drone was surrounded by a blue glow, and without any warning, shot straight forwards. Towards _me._

I jumped out of the way as it crashed right where I had been a moment before, got into cover on the opposite side of the platform, and shot the drone four times. Three too many as it turned out; it had been reduced to scrap already after the crash and the first shot.

When I turned, I saw that Alenko was looking at me, probably as surprised as I was.

"What the hell was that?" I said. Or yelled. It was quite loud out there.

"You said to pull!" he replied.

"That..." My confusion boiled over when another drone popped out and started shooting. I turned to shoot at it, but it was knocked out of the sky with a well placed sniper shot.

Courtesy of Shepard, of course.

"That's the last one on the scanner," she called. "Move it!"

The squad moved out following her orders, and I had to haul ass to catch up, all the while muttering imprecations under my breath. Didn't these people ever get tired? For an answer, they started shooting the geth again. Yeah, they didn't. The second lot of synthetics were even more numerous, and there were two destroyers in the lot, spitting shotgun rounds with careless abandon.

But hey, I had been told to stay in the back, so in the back I stayed.

"ROY!" Shepard shouted. I poked my head out of cover for a moment to look at her. "Pay attention! And get to the front!"

Yeah, I went rather close to needing a new pair of underwear when I heard that. It was one thing to be in the fight, but to be _at the front_ was something else. Specially when it was so unexpected.

"What?"

"There's nothing behind us and you've got my shotgun, so get to the front! Move it!"

"You're the one who wanted to come!" I heard Ash shouting.

I got back in cover, took several deep breaths, and checked my legs. Tired, but they should get me there. Without any more ado, I jumped out of cover, tripped, regained my footing, and rushed down between the barriers we were using for cover. Several rounds hit my shields, and I jumped into cover just as a round hit my leg through the kinetic barrier.

And so, my dive into cover wasn't exactly graceful. Neither was the way I bumped on Ashley and nearly knocked her down.

"Watch it!" she complained, bumping her shoulder hard on me as I fell.

I grunted something unintelligible, but which was supposed to be an amazingly smart and sassy reply. And if you believe that, I have some excellent real estate in Eden Prime I'd like to sell you.

"Anything broken?" I heard Shepard shout.

"No," I said, looking at my leg. There was a noticeable dent on the ceramic plate, but the shot hadn't gone through. "No holes, but damn that smarts."

"Chop chop then, more shooting and less talking!" Shepard said.

With another witty riposte consisting of an annoyed grunt, I popped out of cover next to Ashley and went at it. It was what is usually referred to as a target-rich environment. More flashlights than a watchmen convention sponsored by Duracell, let me tell you.

I dove down when the bullets started hitting, while Ash simply propped herself to a different position and kept firing. Once my shields were recharged, I joined her, only to have to dive down after just half a dozen shots.

"Dammit, the shields on this thing suck!" I yelled.

"No they don't," Ashley said, speaking between bursts of her assault rifle. Five shots, pause, five shots, you could direct an orchestra with the rhythm. "You're just such a nice target."

Given the way bullets were flying I must have imagined it, but I could swear I heard the others sniggering. When my shields finally recharged I popped out, trying _really_ hard not to look like an appetizing, prominent target. I considered taking the helmet off to check if there was a target painted on it, but decided against when I saw the ridiculously large geth destroyer levelling its shotgun at me. I got there first, and fired so fast my gun overheated in three seconds flat.

Which worked wonders when the destroyer shot at me, and his very damaged, half-blown shotgun exploded in his hands. It sent him flying back in three pieces (yes, I counted them), and sent the rest of us scrambling for cover.

"Bloody fucking hell Roy!" Was that Alenko? I didn't know he could actually swear. I really do bring out the best in people. "Watch where you aim!"

"It worked, didn't it?"

"That's one way of putting it!" he shouted again. The geth had recovered quite well, but were down the two destroyers, so the remaining troopers were getting a very serious case of lead poisoning. Not much from me, since the shotgun, for all the fire it could spit was crap at long range, but the others were absolutely trashing them. "How I would put it isn't fit for polite company!"

"Jesus, is this guy for real?" I muttered. That had to be the most elaborate and polite put down I had even been subjected to.

"Look who's talking," Ashley replied. Seriously, what the hell?

I fired one last barrage with my shotgun and switched back to the pistol I had commandeered. I wasn't getting pelted by bullets anymore, and I had to aim carefully if I wanted to hit the ones far away. All in all I'm glad no one was scoring me for accuracy, because I sucked.

By the time the last geth went down, with its flashlight head exploding in a shower of mechanical goo and bits, and Shepard shouting a heartfelt "_booyah!"_, I could hardly hold the pistol in my hands. Not only they were trembling something fierce, but my arms and legs were starting to feel like jello. I was tired, really, really thirsty, and breathing hard. After Ashley gave the all clear, I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and put my pistol back in its proper place after a not insignificant amount of effort.

"You okay?" Shepard said. I looked up to see the blonde smirking at me again, and behind her, Ashley giving me a look of undisguised disgust.

When did Ash become such a bitch anyway? Did I ask that already?

"No holes, so I guess so," I replied. Shepard offered me a hand, and helped me get steady once I was up.

"Adrenalin is a hell of a drug," she said, and bumped my shoulder with her fist. "Come on, before Nihlus leaves us to take the next tram."

I followed as ordered, stopping to pick up a discarded geth rifle which, due to some miracle, still looked intact. I turned away from the rest of the group, secured it firmly against my shoulder, aimed at one of the low metal barriers, and gave it a tentative try. It started spitting rounds like crazy, but to my relief the recoil wasn't too bad. Still, it was easier to use if I just shot very short bursts.

"ROY!"

That was Shepard. And she sounded pissed. I lowered the gun and turned, only to see all four of them had their guns out and vaguely trained in my direction.

"What?" I said.

"What the hell are you doing? You scared the crap out of us! Don't just start shooting without warning!"

Yeah, it wasn't just her. They were all pretty pissed off. I gave a sheepish "sorry" as an answer, to the annoyed huffs of mostly Ashley. The rifle folded easily enough in my hands, and I managed to clip it in place behind my back. Free guns!

Once I made it to the tram, Nihlus smacked the controls and the platform took off at surprising speed towards the spaceport.

I wasn't planning on saying anything, but Shepard had other plans.

"Okay Roy, since you seem to have a bad case of the shiny, you better key into our radio frequency."

"The shiny?"

"Yeah, getting distracted by shiny things and ignoring my orders," she said. "So, frequency 739, code echo, echo, bravo, zulu."

My blank look was probably eloquent enough. After a very uncomfortable pause I brought up my omni-tool (on my third try only!) and started fumbling through the options. Without any warning, Ash grabbed my wrist, yanked my arm back at a weird angle, and ignored my surprised yelp of pain as she worked through the omni-tool. A burst of static later I was on the network with the others.

The OSD on my helmet's visor blinked on the corner to let me know I was online, and four status bars appeared on the left side.

"What the...?" Shepard said. "What's wrong with your armor? It's got warnings all over."

"I think I didn't put it on properly," I half-mumbled.

"Jeez, do you know how to wipe your own ass?" Ashley said.

"Great, ass inspections next."

"You wish," she said, her voice somewhere between annoyed and amused.

I just rolled my eyes and took my shotgun. I could see we were rapidly approaching the spaceport, and the tram was slowing down. Nihlus was bouncing on his feet, a ball of spiky, plated nervousness. Shepard had her sniper rifle up, looking ahead through the scope.

"I don't see any geth, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Same as before people, Williams up front with Nihlus, Alenko with me, Roy at the back. And keep your head down this time."

The tram hadn't even stopped when Nihlus jumped out. And he didn't even take the normal exit, he jumped the railing on the left, which was no small feat given the height of the barrier.

"Nihlus!" Shepard shouted. "Of all the hotheaded turians... Move it people!"

Ashley charged ahead, Shepard and Alenko following close. And all three of them ignored the enormous bomb at the end of the platform.

"Shepard, I think there's a bomb here," I said.

Atop the stairs, the firefight had already begun. If the geth were hoping to catch Shepard by surprise, the only things they were catching were small and moving at quasi-relativistic speeds.

"Can you disarm it?" her response came over the radio.

"Uh..."

"Yeah, stupid question." Man, they really never let a chance pass by without sniping at it. Kinda fitting really. "Alenko, get down there. Roy, come make yourself useful."

I legged it up, and slapped Alenko on the shoulder as we passed each other. If I recalled correctly, the in-game way to disarm a bomb is to click on it and wait. I hoped Alenko would be up to the challenge.

Sadly, I wasn't.

"Get on point with Williams, and don't walk in front of me when I'm aiming," Shepard said as I passed her, raising her sniper rifle to clear my way.

"Got it."

There was actually very light resistance. We took four geth in the time it took Alenko to disarm the bomb, and a fifth one when he came up to tell us there were more of them on the scanners. With Ash at the front, Alenko and Shepard in the middle, and me bringing in the rear, we made through another three groups of two – simple troopers with assault rifles that posed little to no challenge.

I was starting to think it was too easy, but I knew better than to say anything about it. I've seen way too many films and played way too many games to know you don't tempt fate.

The last bomb came about without having heard a peep from Nihlus.

"Last one before I go put my boot up a certain Turian's ass," Shepard said, motioning for Alenko to get to the bomb.

There wasn't anything behind us at all, we were standing at the end of a raised platform with several heavy crates blocking most of the view, and a very large drop at the end. Ashley and Shepard took positions behind the crates, Alenko went for the bomb, and I stayed at the back. There was nothing much going on, so I kept my attention on the fight. The two women were doing a fantastic job of reducing the clankers to scrap, it really was a wonder to behold.

Then, out of apparently nowhere, I saw this beam of light landing on Ashley's head. It kept getting brighter, so I turned to see where it was coming from, and my heart made a very noticeable bump when I realized it was a geth. It was perched atop the tall wall of the spaceport, and aiming the beam at Ashley.

"SNIPER!" I shouted, getting out of cover and pumping the shotgun at the geth's position as fast as I could. It was way too far for the pellets to have a noticeable effect, but not so far that the geth's sniper rifle couldn't switch targets quickly to aim at me.

I tried to dodge out of the way, but instead I felt like a sledgehammer had hit me on the shoulder. There was this _cru__n__ch_ I didn't just hear, but felt as well, and I was thrown back and slammed on one of the metallic crates.

For a moment I was too stunned to really think about anything. It was all very dull and distant. Then, the pain came. Let me tell you, I've broken my arm and several ribs before, but that was nothing like it. It hurt so much that I couldn't even shout, it hurt too much to just try and press with my ribs to make any noise. I became vaguely aware of the continuing gunfire, and being dragged away by my feet. Then Alenko's worried face peeked at the edge of my field of vision.

"How is he?" Shepard shouted over the fire.

"Alive!"

I felt him digging through my shoulder, which at this point was not just hurting, but burning like the T-1000 had just stabbed through me after coming out of its molten steel bath, and then my whole side filled with a sudden cooling sensation.

Which didn't help at all, because now the pain felt like a throbbing, and like bones were splintering on every throb. The good thing was that I could speak again.

"Argh! Son o... My... Godd... Fu..."

Well, I could babble again.

"He'll be fine, commander," Alenko said. Whoop-dee-doo, thanks for the vote of confidence.

"Bomb's defused?"

"Yes."

"Good, stay were with him, We'll go-"

A sudden, not too distant explosion interrupted Shepard. It didn't sound particularly loud, not like Shepard throwing grenades anyway. More of a kind of "Bomf!" sound. But it was close and, for a moment, a bright green flash seemed to fill the spaceport.

"What on Earth was that?" Ashley said.

"The... beacon..." I muttered. How in hell did my brain make the connection while I was lying on the ground and looking at the universe flashing my life before my eyes, I'll never know.

"What?" Shepard said, and peeked down at me too. "How do you know?"

"I just... Nihlus..." I stopped mumbling when Alenko gave me another shot of medigel, and the ugly snapping throbs started to recede. "Oooh, I'll have more of that bartender," I said, and got a surprised chuckle out of the lieutenant.

Shepard, in the meantime, had probably decided that a conversation with me, in my current condition, was likely going to be as interesting as asking questions to Mr. Potato, so she ordered Ashley to follow, and took off in the direction of the loading bays. I heard distant shooting again.

"Need help?" Alenko called over the radio.

"Negative," Shepard replied. "It's only- Shit!"

"Shepard?" Alenko insisted.

"Nihlus is down, and the beacon's been destroyed. Can you get here LT?"

Alenko looked at me, and I just nodded. I was feeling like crap, but I didn't feel like yelling for someone to shoot me and finish me off already anymore.

"On my way Commander," he replied. "Stay here and don't try to move," he added; he tapped me on the good shoulder, and then he was gone.

Damn, the sky of Eden Prime looked beautiful. The blue colour was slightly off, like someone had painted it with the wrong palette, but it was very nice nonetheless.

After a few minutes I heard Shepard's voice over the radio.

"Ground team to Normandy. We need extraction, two wounded. Area's clear of hostiles."

"Copy that, en route. ETA six minutes," the response came.

Was that Joker? Damn, it'd be nice to meet him. I had to tell Shepard I had to come with her. I tried to sit up, and realized that my sneaky shoulder had only been quietly letting me feel better so that it could ambush me, as soon as I tried to move, and stab me with a red hot poker right through. I yelped in pain and stopped trying.

Yelping helplessly at least summoned Shepard. She arrived after only a couple of seconds, fixing a worried look at me.

"Our ship is coming to pick us up," she said. Cautiously, she offered me a hand. "Think you can stand?"

I grabbed her hand with my good one, and tried to tough it out through the pain as she pulled me to my feet. Shepard's keen senses noticed my grimace, low hissing, and muttered imprecations, and she kept holding me up with my arm around her shoulders. She felt damn solid under it, despite the fact that I had quite a few inches and probably some bulk on her.

"I hope you have a doctor on board," I said, and stopped talking with a loud hiss.

Shepard chuckled at that. Slowly, we made our way towards the platform where the others were. Ashley was keeping a lookout, and Alenko was kneeling by the fallen Nihlus. I didn't see any extra turian blood – only dead geth and husks – so he was probably-

_Damn, of course. The beacon._

I just gone fucked up canon but good. Go me.

Shepard must have noticed my sudden hesitation, because she stopped where she was going, and walked me over to a fallen beam instead. With surprising care, she helped me sit down. Guess she only plays it rough when we're not injured, good to know.

"Something wrong? You look like you've just stepped on a varren's s'kak," Shepard said.

"I... what?" I looked at the commander, and given the way she was looking at me I realized I probably wouldn't be able to hide what I was thinking. "Nihlus doesn't seem hurt, what happened?"

"Dunno, you tell me. When we got here he was down and there were pieces of beacon all over."

_Shit. Me tell her? How am I going to explain the beacon? How am I going to justify that I know?_

…

Well, that was a question all right. Why the hell not tell her? I was about to open my mouth when my vision went kind of... wavy, for lack of a better word. Like everything was spinning and getting distorted, even the colours of all that I was seeing. And just as abruptly as it had started, it stopped. And I was somewhere else.

I was standing in a ship. A ship I had seen before. I wasn't hurt, and I wasn't even wearing my armor, just some sort of nondescript white jumpsuit. And in front of me was that strange, white, quasi-glowing woman I had seen in my dream.

"You can't tell her anything," she said.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>And so, even when I'm supposed to follow canon, I'm quite capable of screwing things up! And it's about time the mysterious glowing person that put me in the Mass Effect universe started to explain herself, don't you think?

Quite a bit of support for the fic right off the gate, thanks everyone! And **Archer83**, indeed, Williams _is _quite hot-blooded, you caught on immediately as to why she was pissed! :D

Shooting done, adventure over? Stay tuned to see what else our intrepid hero manages to screw up in this timeline!


	3. Chapter 3

You know, when I found myself in the Mass Effect universe, I had _hoped_, really hoped, that there was some sort of reason. That whoever had put me here would explain what I had to do. I had played it by ear, doing my best to get into the squad and going along with Shepard, and since I at least knew what happened in the games, I had a fair idea of what to expect.

Even though the games have nothing on reality,

On the other hand, suddenly having an out-of-body experience to talk with a glowing apparition mid-conversation with Shepard wasn't really in the cards I thought I was carrying. And she had just told me I couldn't tell Shepard a damn thing.

"What?" I said. Awesome comeback, huh?

"The commander. You can't tell her what you know, or why you know."

"The hell? Why? And who-"

"It never works. More than one thousand others have tried, but every time they told her, their missions ended in failure. Not just failure; the commander cannot handle the truth about the games."

"Bullcrap," I retorted. "She's Shepard! She- what's so funny?'

The glowing lady was chuckling softly at my response, and merely shook her head when I asked my question.

"Nothing. Or rather, all of you. You all sound so surprised when you find out Shepard is only human."

I was about to insist with another "_what?", _only more heavily adorned with expletives, but somehow it felt silly to ask that again. There was a much more obvious question.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Who we are... _What _we are, in a way that you can understand. We are AI."

"That doesn't explain anything!" I snapped.

"It is not important, Roy. We have brought you here for one purpose. You must find a way to prevent the reapers from achieving their final victory."

"I... Wait a minute. What about the crucible? Doesn't it magically..." I trailed off when I saw her shake her head. Goddammit all, did she mean the crucible can't stop the reapers? But the ending, I saw the damn reapers getting blown to pieces!

"You must find a way, Roy."

"Why the hell me? I mean, if it's just _'having playe__d_ _M__ass __E__ffect' _or something like that, then why not get someone who knew what he was doing? The game's popular as fleas, there's people in the military who'd probably do a _hell_ of a lot better than me. What's so special about me?"

I have to be honest, at that point I was hoping for some clue that I had some kind of super powers or some hidden talent they were about to activate to give me some ultimate something. Too many comic books, I know. But I _really_ wasn't expecting her answer.

"Nothing at all." She waited, but when I tried to speak, and failed miserably, she continued. "We have called more than twenty thousand of your kind. From all walks of life. We have tried giving them no information, giving them all the information, none of them ever managed to find a way to stop the reapers. We have tried so many times..."

"So I'm... like, you're grasping at straws," I said. And I felt like I was going to throw up.

She didn't immediately answer, which was an answer by itself. Then my vision started going all wavy again, and colour drained from the world.

"I have to send you back, we cannot keep this link for long. We will speak again," she said.

And then I was back on Eden Prime, feeling like my stomach had twisted into a pretzel, and everything was spinning.

"Roy?" Shepard said. I looked vaguely in her direction, only vaguely because it was getting very hard to focus. I tried to lean back, but my improvised seat had no backrest, so instead I ended up falling on my back.

"Roy!"

I don't know what else happened, because at some indistinct point after that, I passed out.

* * *

><p>When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was that I didn't have a clue where I was. It was a dimly-lit room, I was resting on a narrow and very high bed, and there was some sort of arch of light above my head. I tried to sit up, but my shoulder gave me a painful poke when I moved my arm.<p>

I looked down, and saw that: a) I was barechested, and b) the wound on my shoulder was covered with some bandages. It didn't really hurt that much. I also noticed that I had rashes all over, mostly dry and apparently treated.

"Ah, mister Morgan. You're awake."

That voice, it was familiar as hell. I looked to the side, and saw an older woman standing up from her seat at a desk in the far corner. Right, I should have known who she was, but I couldn't quite remember.

"I'm Dr. Karin Chakwas, and you're aboard the SSV Normandy. How are you feeling?"

"Uh... Dunno... A bit confused," I replied. Which was true.

"Due to the painkillers. You should be feeling better soon." She pulled a sort of robotic arm out of the contraption atop the bed, and started running a scan over my shoulder. "You had quite a hole, I had to use several rounds of bone weaving to repair all the fractures. How does it feel?"

She raised my arm carefully, looking at my face as she explored the range of movement. It hurt, but wasn't too bad.

"It's not very comfy," I said, unable to hold back a grimace, "but it's not terrible. Thank you."

"Good. I'll still recommend a sling for the next few hours, while the medi-gel finishes its work. No exercise or any harsh movements."

"Sure thing."

She went off to dig through one of the cabinets embedded in the wall, and I took the chance to look around. I was in the freaking Normandy! Sure, it was just the medbay, which wasn't particularly exciting, but holy balls I was in space! Wait, assuming I was in space that is, maybe the Normandy was still on Eden Prime, and they were going to kick me out as soon as I was up.

Then I remembered her. The AI. And her warning that the Reapers weren't going to be stopped by the crucible.

That didn't make any freaking sense. The crucible was the MacGuffin of the third game. It did break the reapers if you fired it, or did some kind of voodoo space magic- Well, that part actually didn't make any sense. It had to be a brainfart of some sort, the real crucible couldn't do that.

_Real crucible? You're losing it Roy._

My musings were interrupted by two near-simultaneous events. First, Chakwas coming to tie me up with the sling, and second, the door of the medbay opening. In came Commander Shepard and who could only be Captain Anderson.

Damn, the man looked _buff!_ I mean, sure, he was an N7, and he didn't exactly look like a chump in the games, but damn. If I recalled correctly, he was pushing fifty or something, and he looked better than I did.

And that totally wasn't meant in a bromance way.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's your thing.

I'll stop talking now.

"Roy," Shepard said, stopping a pace behind Anderson and giving me a nod.

"Commander," I said, and winced when she shot me a _look_. "I mean Shepard."

"This is Captain David Anderson. Captain, the stray cat," she said with a smirk.

"Mister Morgan," Anderson said, offering me his hand.

"Just Roy. Pleasure," I replied, shaking it.

"How are you feeling?"

"Still some pain, but pretty good, thanks."

"Good. Welcome to the Normandy. My XO tells me you were a witness to the whole-" he stopped talking rather suddenly and leaned a little to the side, looking behind me. "Maybe we should take this to my office."

I followed his gaze, and saw he had been looking at Nihlus. He was resting on one of the cots, eyes closed and some bandages over his chest.

"Is he okay?" I said in a low voice.

"Physically he's fine," Chakwas explained. "The bullet wounds were easy enough to fix, but he hasn't regained consciousness. And his brain activity is unusual."

"Anything you know, Roy?" Shepard said. I turned at her in surprise, and she just shrugged. "You were nodding."

_Crap. I can't tell her... Well, I can say something at least._

"No, nothing. I was thinking maybe the beacon but..." I made a show of thinking and shaking my head, and hopefully not digging the hole any deeper. "No, that wouldn't work."

"If there's something you know that can help my patient, I suggest you share it with me," Chakwas said. I swear I heard an _'or else' _in her voice. You know how people always write her as being somewhat scary when it came to medbay, even though she's nothing but kind and supportive during every game? Well, they got that right, I felt a chill run up my spine so fast I expected an arc of electricity to shoot out of my ears.

"I don't know, _know_, okay? I was just thinking, if he was near the beacon..." I looked around, but nobody seemed to follow. "These prothean beacons work, like, putting things into your brain. Like the salarians with their mind-melding thingy."

"That's the Asari," Chakwas corrected.

_Great, why the hell did I go there? _I really had no reason to pretend to be ignorant of that, but there I was, I had thrown it in like I didn't know anything about aliens, while talking about the freaking protheans. And yet Shepard didn't seem inclined to take the shovel off my hands before I dug myself even deeper.

Have I mentioned I am a terrible liar?

"That's the blue ones, right?" I said. All the while thinking _shut up you freaking idiot!_

"Yes."

"Right. So, it's a bit like that I think. Only it was made for protheans, right? So if he's not prothean, then, dunno, maybe it fried something up here," I finished, tapping the side of my head.

"I'll look into this. If it really is similar to an Asari meld, we will have something in the medical database. Thank you Roy."

Meanwhile, Shepard and Anderson had exchanged another _look_, and now were looking at me. Great.

"Shall we?" Shepard said, gesturing for the door.

"Sure."

I threw the sheet covering me aside and swung my legs over the edge, and immediately both Shepard and Anderson stopped moving. Then I noticed how cold it was. How cold it was _everywhere._

With a quick look down I realized I was, indeed, butt-naked. I hastily threw the sheet back over my netherparts, all while feeling like my face was going to catch fire.

"Eh, six out of ten," Shepard said. She gave me a smirk and led the small party out, Anderson behind her shaking his head.

_I just flashed Shepard and Anderson. Fuck my life._

"Could I get some clothes?" I said in a low voice.

To her credit, Chakwas only made a small knowing smile, and didn't try any of the myriad of easy jokes to give me the burn she could have given me. This had to be a common occurrence, because she had a neat pile of fresh clothes and uniforms in one of the cabinets. She gave me some flimsy-looking generic underwear, a rankless SR1 uniform, and a pair of shoes. And once I was finally dressed, with my arm firmly held in the sling, she also gave me a sealed plastic tube.

"For the rashes. I would advise against wearing armor without a proper undermesh in the future."

"Yeah," I replied, taking the tube and putting it in my pocket. "Thanks doc."

I walked off the medbay and, in a single step, I was inside the Normandy proper. It really hadn't hit me while I was in there, even though I kept thinking I was finally in space, but just then... The mess hall, with the SR1 emblazoned on the wall, a few crew members finishing their meals; it was the freaking _Normandy_.

It was a little different than the in-game SR1. There were actually several tables for the mess, and a full stocked kitchen too. A whole wall was covered with lockers, which led me to believe the ship had more crew than one saw in the games too. Also, the corridor at the back, where the sleeping pods were, was rather packed with them.

Come to think of it, I thought the mess hall was actually smaller than in the games as well.

Luckily, not many people took notice of me. A few curious looks and that was it. I saw Ashley taking a tray of food, but other than a look of annoyance she didn't regard me in the least. I was starting to think they had either gotten her wrong in the games, or somehow I actually looked like an alien and she just hated me because of that.

"Roy," Alenko called. He was in his usual spot, behind the console by the captain's room. "The captain and the commander want to see you."

He pointed at the room behind him, but it wasn't like I needed the directions. I headed to the door, stood in front of it like an idiot and then knocked.

"Just come in," Anderson said. I looked at the door, poked the green symbol a bit, and finally found where I was supposed to hit it for the door to open.

I decided not to look behind me to see who had seen me made a spectacle of myself.

The room was just like I remembered from the game, only... smaller. The desk was very near the door, and the bed not far behind. There was another door, which looked like it was a small bathroom. Anderson was sitting at his desk, and Shepard was sitting on the edge of the small bed.

"Have a seat, Roy," Anderson said, gesturing to the chair across him.

"Thank you sir," I replied. Damn but the man commanded respect. Even when he was looking all casual sitting back on his chair. The way they had placed me, I was looking at him, and Shepard was not exactly behind me, but I had to turn my head to see her.

It was uncomfortable.

"We're currently en route to the Citadel, we'll arrive in about twelve hours." He waited for a reaction, so I nodded at him. "The whole mission has been a disaster, but apparently you saw the whole thing."

"Uh... I guess? What thing?"

"Tell us what happened, in your own words."

I looked at him, at Shepard, and took a deep breath. It smelled like a setup of some kind.

"Okay... Where do I start. It was a beautiful day, then all of the sudden, there's freaking geth everywhere."

"No warnings? No alarms?" Shepard said.

I turned to look over my shoulder. Was that going to be a thing? Stabbing me with questions from the back? "Not that I heard. The first thing I heard were the shouts and the explosions."

"Go on," Anderson prompted.

"There..." I remembered the explosion right as I came out of the prefab building. Not just the fuzzy part where I was thrown on my face, ears ringing, and not knowing where the fuck I was. No. It was the part where people were shouting, some of them scared, others because they had been half-blown away. And the ones who didn't scream, because they had been completely to pieces. And the _smell_. There was something about the smells that made it all so terribly real.

"Roy?"

This time Shepard's question wasn't like a stab to keep me off balance. There was real concern there. The way Anderson was looking at me, he was concerned too, which made me wonder what face I was making.

"It wasn't pretty," I finally said, half-mumbling. "The geth were brutal, they were killing every person they came across. I ran like a headless chicken, until I found the... Well, where I found the armor and the gun. By the time I did, I had lost sight of any geth. Or any people really. Then when I was trying to put it on I saw the turian."

"Nihlus," Anderson said.

"Yeah. He was in and out so quick I didn't even knew what had happened. So I grabbed the gun and went after him."

"Why?" Shepard said.

"Like I said," I said. "Everyone running away, geth attacking, and someone taking down geth like there's no tomorrow? Seemed like the best choice."

Anderson chuckled and shook his head.

"Told you," Shepard told him.

"Yes, yes," the captain replied. I had that tingle on the back of my neck that told me I had missed something that involved me. "So, you caught up to him?"

"Not really. He was fast as hell. The only reason I did was because he stopped to talk to another turian at the spaceport tram station."

Outwardly, Anderson didn't even move, but the look in his eyes became a lot more intense. It clicked then that he had probably heard it from Shepard already. He nodded for me to go on.

"So I see them talking, I'm thinking _great, reinforcements_, then this other turian gets behind Nihlus, pulls a gun out, and was about to shoot him in the back of the head."

"And you stopped him?"

"Pure dumb luck. I pulled my gun, started shooting, and apparently hit him. Didn't seem to do anything much, but it did give Nihlus a chance."

"Did you get a good look at this turian?"

"Yeah. Saren. Big, grey, mechanical arm, looked like he was half machine already. Bigass pointy fringe and all."

Anderson and Shepard looked at each other. They did so for a while, so much so that I kept looking at them, Shepard over my shoulder, Anderson in front of me.

"So how did you know Nihlus anyway?" Shepard said.

"Huh?"

The way she was glaring at me, she knew that I knew Nihlus. Before I even ran into them. As I said, I am a terrible liar, and making up shit as I went didn't quite work. And, apparently, making half truths didn't work this time either.

_Plan B? Plan B._

"He's a Spectre," I said, trying to put the best sigh of resignation I could. "And so is Saren. To be honest, I couldn't believe it when I saw it." That much was true, just wasn't saying what it was I couldn't believe exactly.

"And you knew that how?"

"Are you kidding? Special agents that can do whatever they want, who doesn't know them?"

Did I sound like a fanboy? I hoped that I sounded like a fanboy, because that was plan B. Stupid as it might be. And all because that AI wasn't letting me tell Shepard the truth.

_Actually, will she know? I could just-_

My train of thought was interrupted when my vision started to lose its colour, and go wavy in front of me. I blinked a couple of times, and it went away.

_A warning. Seriously, what the hell?_

There was a very awkward pause, which I took as a good sign. Yeah, so I came across as an idiot fanboy. It was the only thing I could think of. Thanks a lot, secret mysterious glowing AI.

I made a mental note to flip her the bird next time she decided to invade my mental privacy.

"You see Roy, we have a little problem," Anderson said. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his arms, and put his hands under his chin. "Shepard said you did okay as part of the squad."

That surprised me. I looked back over my shoulder, and I saw her smirk. "Bit rough, but you did okay. You are in desperate need of training, though."

"Okay."

"So, since we thought you may be useful, I asked Arcturus to run a background check."

Anderson paused dramatically, which kind of worried me a bit. I wasn't sure what exactly they could have found out. I mean, I'm pretty sure I didn't even exist in this universe. Or if it was the future, I would have disappeared a bit under two hundred years ago. Okay, _that_ would be awkward.

"And they found nothing."

I blinked a couple of times. "And that's bad?"

"Nothing at all. As far as the Systems Alliance is concerned, you don't exist. Not even close DNA matches, distant relatives, nothing." He gave me a very significant look, which made my ass suddenly find the chair rather uncomfortable. "Now, there may be a few reasons for that, but I'd like to hear it from you. Where are you from?"

"Earth," I replied.

"Where on Earth?" Shepard said. The tit-for-tat between the two of them was really throwing me off-balance here. "I can't quite place the accent."

"Uh, well..." _Crap. Two hundred years, are the maps still the same? _"Europe, down the Mediterranean."

"Uh-huh," she replied, looking unconvinced.

"And how come you aren't a registered citizen?" Anderson again. See what I mean? Bad cop, good cop. Or bad cop, worse cop.

"Ah, well," I stammered. "Strange community, you know. Kinda luddites, it was like living in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century or something."

"I see," Anderson replied. He looked at the desk, picked an item from it, and tossed it at me as he kept talking. "And how did you end up on Eden Prime?"

I caught the thing with my good arm, and noticed it was a weird rectangular electronic gizmo, with two looped straps, one on each end. I looked at it while trying to figure out what it was, then got distracted when Anderson asked me about Eden Prime.

"I have no idea. I just got out of... Well, left home. Didn't even think about where I was going."

"Really," Shepard deadpanned. I still couldn't decide whether she was supposed to be the good or the bad cop. She kept doing both.

The thing Anderson had tossed at me almost dropped when I kept fidgeting with it, but I managed to catch it between my legs. The two of them were looking at me, but I had no idea what to say. I was fairly sure I could only dig the hole deeper, so I refused to grab the shovel again and go at it.

Finally, it was Shepard who spoke, and again she was back to the good cop bit. "Look, Roy. I wasn't kidding when I said you did okay back on Eden Prime. You offered to help, and I wouldn't turn you down, at least for now. But you have to look at it from my perspective. You seem to know about the protheans, which is useful, but the most basic things seem to puzzle you." She pointed a the gizmo in my hand. "That's your omni-tool. That is, the omni-tool you took from the garrison. You didn't have one of your own, and it doesn't look like you even know how to use it."

I stopped fidgeting with the omni-tool, and I knew I was _staring_ at Shepard, not merely looking. Trying to figure out when the hammer was going to fall. Was she going to tell me they didn't trust me? That they were going to kick me out? Maybe they had decided that I was a spy, and were just going to interrogate me. As in punch in the face and ask a question kind of interrogation.

Yeah, not good. Meanwhile, Shepard was still talking and I hadn't been paying attention.

"So throw us a bone here. All that adds up to I don't know what. I was thinking maybe you were an escaped slave, but then half the things you do are completely off."

I sighed. Yeah, it wasn't going to work. With Ghosty McGhost not letting me say anything about what I know, and how much I suck at lying? We were going to be here all day. Maybe I could just flat out tell her _I can't tell you, or some ghost AI that brought me here will fry my brain._

Curiously, I was expecting to get the warning again, vision waving and world going black and white and all that, but it didn't happen. Maybe she wasn't really reading my mind. Regardless, there was no point to continuing this conversation.

"Look, if you can't trust me I understand." I leaned forward to stand up, but was immediately stopped when I saw Anderson lunging at me. I sat down again in a flash and snapped my head to look at him, but as it turned out he wasn't doing anything of the sort. All he had done was sit up and raise his hand in a gesture for me to stop.

Whoopsy. Yeah, I may suck at lying, but making up stuff, specially in my _extremely _paranoid head? Bloody aces. I totally saw him ready to punch me in the face in my mind.

Anderson noticed my reaction. May have been the wide eyed shocked look I gave him.

"Roy," he said, speaking in a very calm voice. "It's not like that." He exchanged a look with Shepard, and turned to me again, putting on a small smile. "We'll be coming to the Citadel in about twelve hours. You're still a key witness to this investigation, so if you could stick around until we present the evidence to the council, we'd appreciate it."

"Sure," I said. Or half-mumbled.

"After that, we can decide what happens next." He gestured towards the door. "We need to finish the report to the council, and add your testimony. Thank you for your time."

"Ah, right," I said, now standing up. I have them a nod each and walked off. And even as I stepped out of the office and the door closed behind me, I had no idea what the hell had happened. Was it good or bad?

_Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun!_

Man, Ash was a badass. I love that movie.

The mess had cleared out during our little chat, and the only one left was Ash. Not Army of Darkness Ash, but Mass Effect Ash. She was nursing a steaming cup of something, and didn't even look at me as I passed. She didn't look like she was looking at anything in particular, she looked like she was a million miles away. Still on Eden Prime, maybe. I had to admit, I was pretty hungry, but there was no food I could see. All the cabinets were locked, and the only fridge I could see had a red light on it too.

"Only authorized personnel," I heard Ashley said. I turned to her, but she wasn't even looking at me.

I sighed, and grabbed an empty drink bottle. I was thirsty too, probably the cold sweat during the little interrogation helped that. So, water it was. Found the tap, filled the bottle, sat down at one of the tables – and not the one Ash was at – and set to figure out how to use the damn omni-tool.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>I always wondered about how easily Shepard seemed to let what amounted to civilians - well armed civilians, but civilians nonetheless - join her crew. I assume the Mass Effect universe is like the wild west, with everyone armed and the law deputizing citizens anytime a bad shootout is going to go down. So yeah, getting in the crew seems doable if you look useful.

That is, if you manage to make a good impression. All in all, not the greatest first impression for Roy, I have to say.

Thanks for all the reviews, follows, and everything else! **XRaider, **she's not _that _glowy, but glowy enough :D And **Archer83**, it's not going to be that easy! ;) Mizuki, Lfan, Sappiros, thanks too =)

So, en route to the Citadel. Where the magic happens!


	4. Chapter 4

After I left Anderson's office, the two of them stayed back to discuss my interrogation. I figured as much at the time, but only found about the contents of their conversation much, much later, in a conversation with a bunch of the crew about how we had joined the Normandy.

Shepard didn't move from her spot, still sitting at the edge of the bed, kicking her feet lightly and leaning back, while propping herself up with her arms, while Anderson kept to his chair.

"What do you think, sir?" Shepard said.

"I'm not sure I buy it," Anderson said.

"I know, but you've seen him. He's a terrible liar, and all I have to do is switch between friendly and serious, and I can throw him off-balance anytime. Whatever it is he's not saying, I don't think he's a spy or an agent. Unless he's a _really_ good actor."

"No, you're right. You saw how jumpy he was," Anderson said, nodding.

"Runaway?"

"Possibly. Just have to figure out who it is he's running from. Don't want to invite more trouble in than he's worth."

Their conversation was interrupted when Shepard's omni-tool chimed, and once she saw the message, a smile started to creep over her face. Not missing it, Anderson chuckled and stood up.

"Go ahead and use my terminal, Shepard. I need some coffee."

"Captain, I can-"

Anderson waved her off and left his quarters, leaving Shepard alone inside. She shook her head, went to the terminal, and opened the FTL comms link. After a few moments, a burst of static preceded the face of a man in his sixties, close cropped salt and pepper hair, square and strong jaw, piercing blue eyes, and markings of a Lieutenant Commander on his uniform. The name badge was visible too, Edward Shepard.

And he was smiling.

"Hello baby girl," he said, his eyes almost disappearing in the wrinkles produced by his wide smile.

"Hi dad. Is this a bad time?"

"Nah, we're just in the middle of some training manoeuvres; classified stuff, you know the drill."

"Shouldn't the chief engineer be on duty then?" Shepard said, her own smile mirroring her father's.

"I just pulled a double shift, Smithies can run the ship for now. Your mom, on the other hand, would probably agree with you," he said, finishing with a wink.

Shepard chuckled and shook her head. "She probably would at that."

"So," Edward said, not changing his light tone in the slightest. "How did the mission go?"

At that, Shepard's smile did vanish. She looked at the screen, and as it often happened, she wished she could actually be there. But that was life in the navy, you got sent around and had to put up with it. The only reason her parents got to serve in the same ship was that her father had pretty much given up on advancement through the chain of command, and that he worked so damn hard at being the best engineer the Systems Alliance had to offer that he could pretty much pick and choose which ship he wanted to serve in, and nobody would have a reason to cry _"nepotism!"_.

"Not great."

"Yeah, I gathered. Want to talk about it? As much as you can, classified stuff and all that, am I right?"

"Yes," Shepard chuckled at that, but it was a short lived reprieve. "It was chaos. Eden Prime, not sure if anything's filtered through yet..."

"We heard. Attacked by unknown forces."

"Not unknown, it was the Geth."

Edward looked at Shepard for several seconds without saying a word. His eyebrows were almost comically arched up, although he managed not to let his mouth hang open in surprise.

"The Geth? What the hell were they doing on Eden Prime?"

"That's the classified part," Shepard replied. "But it was the Geth all right. We got a crate full of robot parts to show for it."

"Damn. And it was just the Normandy?"

"Just us," Shepard said. "We lost so many people. Civilians, the local garrison. We... We lost Jenkins too." She looked at Edward, and her father just nodded at her, trying to give her a reassuring look. "Ambushed by some geth drones. There must have been something wrong with his suit, they ripped through his shields like they weren't even there."

"I'm sorry baby girl," he said, shaking his head.

"He was from Eden Prime, so he was so eager. I should have reined him in. Paid more attention. If I had..."

"Elizabeth, don't do that," he chided her gently.

"It was my mission," Shepard retorted.

"Yes. Against an unknown enemy, while outgunned, and ambushed. Liz, there isn't even a fine line between learning from what went wrong and taking all the blame, and you not only cross it, but stomp all over it. You have to stop doing that." Shepard nodded wordlessly, so Edward kept talking. "What is it Anderson always says?"

"Marines die, and that's what we're here for. But that doesn't mean we will forget them," she quoted automatically, not even stopping to think.

"That's right. And who did you save?"

"Some colonists, the gunny from the 212, I even got to pull Nihlus out of some serious trouble."

"I told you Spectres _were_ trouble."

"Why, thanks dad!"

Edward blinked a couple of times in surprise, until his brain kicked into gear and got what Shepard had meant. He let out a low whistle, and smiled. "That's my girl. So that's why the turian was following you everywhere, huh?"

"Yup!"

"Well, that outta give you extra Spectre points. Got himself over his head?"

"Not exactly," Shepard replied, chuckling at her father's quip. "It's a little complicated, he was caught off-guard. A kid from the colony actually saved him first."

"A kid?"

"Yeah. Well, not so much a kid, he's got to be, what, twenty or something. I haven't actually asked him, come to think of it."

"Hmmmm, anything interesting about him?"

"Lots, actually," Shepard replied distractedly. She then realized what her father had said, looked at the screen, and saw the smug smile on his face. "Da-ad! That's not what I mean!" Her protest only brought out an amused laugh from Edward.

_For crying out loud, I'm a twenty-nine year old woman, why does he make me feel like a teenager every time we talk!_

As if reading her mind, Edward stopped laughing to answer her. "Baby girl, you'll be a hundred, and we'll still be able to embarrass you whenever we want. It's our god-given right as your parents," he said, and gave her a wink.

* * *

><p>I was somewhat confused when Shepard came out of the Captain's quarters about half an hour after Anderson himself. She looked relaxed, and had an easy smile on her face. Whatever she did in there-<p>

_Bad brain! Bad!_

Yeah, totally _not _what I meant. Regardless, she looked rather... well, not _happy, _but close enough. She nodded at me, and made her way to the kitchen. I must have looked like a hungry homeless man, because she looked at me again and turned her smile into a smirk. That smirk signalled danger, but I hadn't learned it yet.

"Hungry?"

"A little," I said, which was a heck of an understatement.

She disappeared under the counter, rummaging through one of the cabinets, and after a few seconds, popped up again with a foil pack in her hand. She gestured with the pack at me, then tossed it across with excellent accuracy. I caught it mid-air with my good arm, and turned it in my hand. It was completely nondescript, other than a red mark on the corner. A-101. Whatever was wrapped inside was square, and hard.

"What's this?"

"Emergency rations. You can have as many as you want."

"Cool, thanks."

As I said, I totally missed the meaning behind the mischievous grin on her face, as well as the looks Ashley and Anderson were giving me. I tore the foil open, looked inside, and saw there were four dry bars of... I couldn't quite tell what. I pulled one out, and without even giving it a sniff, I dug in.

_Bloody hell__._

Not only it was hard as fucking concrete, it tasted like stale weet-bix mixed with some sort of dried up fruit – or, rather, fossilized fruit – and kept together with plastic.

So, needless to say, I grimaced, chewed through, finished the first bar in four bites, and went for the second. What can I say, I've been a student. At least it wasn't freaking pot noodles. By the time I was working on the third, Shepard joined me, carrying a plate of steaming hot pasta.

"You like them?" she said, not bothering to disguise her amusement.

I heard Ashley sniggering, and a quick glance showed her looking at me and trying not to laugh, and Anderson doing an excellent job at being distracted with his datapad. The twitch on her eye did give him away.

"I've had worse," I said, popping in the last piece and going for the last bar. The response probably wasn't what they were expecting, because it cut down the joking chatter. Yeah, I _have_ had worse. I went back to fiddling with the omni-tool, which took Shepard's attention again.

"Whatcha doin'?" she said over a mouthful, and swallowed. "Sending a message home?"

_That'd be a trick,_ I thought. I hadn't thought about it, but I was, at best, nearly two hundred years from them. At worst, a whole damn universe away. And now that it hit me... I found that it didn't really bother me that much. I had been glad to show them my back when I buggered off as soon as I could, and all it meant now was that they _really_ didn't have a chance to fuck with me again.

Shepard either didn't notice that I got lost in thought with her question, or decided that it was something she wanted to keep digging through.

"Where's your family anyway?" she said, still keeping it light and casual.

"Probably dead," I said. _Unless they managed to live to two hundred, that is. Wouldn't surprise me, mala hierba nunca muere, as we say in Spanish._

Her eyebrows shot up when I said that, which made me realize what exactly those words must have come across like. I shrugged to try and take the sting out of that. Not that I could tell her _why_, which made it only worse. Now we were looking at each other, and I was furiously trying to come up with something to say. At the end, I decided to keep it simple.

"Don't worry about it Shepard, I'm fine."

I popped the last bite of bar, and went back to my omni-tool. Shepard went back to her meal too, and out of the corner of my eye I saw she was observing me.

"So what _are_ you doing?" she finally said. I think she was trying really hard to strike conversation, which was unfortunate as I really didn't have a clue what to talk about with her. Since the _obvious_ was out, thanks to the freaking glowing AI, I needed some time to think my plan on how to break things for Shepard in a hidden, backhanded way.

Raising my arm carefully in my sling, I showed her the screen. "Chapter 1, _how to use your omni-tool_," I said. "It's amazing how much this thing can do."

"It's just the basic bluewire," Shepard said. "You should see what one can do with an upgrade."

"What's the upgrade do?"

"There's loads of them. Faster processing, a better micro-fabricator, more power... There's usually a tradeoff, so it's not like you can upgrade _everything. _You wouldn't have a power source big enough to begin with." She raised her hand, showing me her own omni-tool. "With this one I can make a tech mine in two seconds, yours would probably take half a minute. And as for power, you won't be able to make a basic overload."

"Oh."

"Eh, don't worry too much. Specialized programs aren't for everyone, it won't help you if you don't really know how to use them."

"Yeah, you should stick to solitaire."

That was Ash. Shepard and I turned to look at her, and the chief merely stood up and walked off, not even looking at me. I watched her go, still puzzling over why she was being so abrasive with me. Sure, I hadn't been brilliant out there, but heck, I took a bullet that was destined for her head. Of course, I shouldn't have taken the bullet in the first place and just shot the geth, but hey, give me a break here.

The most disturbing revelation was that _solitaire_ was still a thing in the 22nd century. Yikes.

"She lost her whole unit down there," Shepard said. As if it was an explanation, it's not like it was my bloody fault, is it?

I just shook my head and went back to my omni-tool. Distractedly, I scratched my neck under the uniform, where the rash was starting to really become annoying.

"I recommend you don't wear armor without undermesh next time," Shepard said, not bothering to hide her chuckle.

"Yeah," I deadpanned.

"Seriously. Didn't the fact that all the edges were digging in your skin clue you in?"

"Obviously not," I retorted without looking up, then immediately caught myself. Yeah, I probably looked like an idiot, body armor seemed as common as fleas in the Mass Effect universe. If I were anywhere near normal, I should have seen a few.

I heard Shepard chuckle again, and a moment later, my omni-tool pinged.

"You gotten to the messaging instructions yet?" she said.

With a click on the exclamation mark on the top left corner, I opened the messages, and saw one from Shepard. It had a document attached.

"What's this?" I said, flicking through pages. "Armor, weapons, maintenance and storage..."

"Standard alliance toolset maintenance," Shepard said. When I looked at her, she shrugged. "Eh, it's not a state secret or anything, you could find it on the extranet once we get to port."

"Wpw. That's going to help, thanks." I flicked through the pages, it was full of helpful diagrams and basics. "So no int- er, extranet access while on transit?"

"Not during FTL, no. Standard FTL beam for point-to-point comms only."

_Like I know the difference._

"I see. Ta."

"You're welcome. If you want to try it on, your gear is stored in a locker downstairs. Me? I'm going to catch some shut-eye. Your pod is that one." Shepard pointed at the nearest pod on the right side. She saw the blank look I gave it, and chuckled again. "It's in the manual too. They're easy to operate."

"OK, thanks. I think I'll go try the armor on properly first."

She waved me as she made her way to her pod, stopping only to put the dish and cutlery in the dishwasher, and I took off towards the elevator, after disposing of the foil wrapper of my rations. To my displeased surprise, the thing was ridiculously slow, so it took a while until I got down there. The cargo bay of the Normandy was similar to what I expected based on the games, only it seemed to be larger, and there were a couple of doors at the sides, on either side of the corridors that led to engineering. Apparently there were extra compartments. As it turned out, the place wasn't empty. Ashley was at her post, putting some weapons away.

The lockers were next to her workbench, opposite side of the mako. I resisted the temptation of checking the unwieldy beast close-up, and found my locker instead. It had my name stencilled in a corner, and it was next to the locker of one Richard L. Jenkins.

I stared at the name for a while. Dammit, it would have been nice to save him too. Not that I really had much of a chance, it was a freaking miracle I managed to distract Saren long enough for Nihlus to get his scaly ass out of trouble.

With a mental sigh, I turned to my locker, and managed to open it on my first try. Yay me. Biometrics, apparently. The pistol was clipped to a metallic stripe on the back, and so was the geth pulse rifle; the armor was neatly folded and piled up on one side, and there was what I surmised had to be an underlay folded next to it. I picked the mesh and unfolded it, looking at the thing. It was completely black, the inside lined with soft material, and the outside was rough to the touch, with thicker fibres interleaved in a zig-zag pattern.

"Come to play dress-up?" Ash said. She glanced at me once, shook her head, and went back to putting together the assault rifle on the bench.

"Chief, what's your problem with me?" I said, after thinking for a couple of seconds whether this was going to be worth the trouble, or if I was better off just letting it slide and ignoring her. Apparently, I was feeling particularly masochistic that day.

"My problem," she said slowly, sliding in the outer casing of the rifle and snapping it in place. She then turned to me, and stood barely a step away, pointing at my chest. "My problem is you, playing soldier out there and pretending... What the hell do you think this is, some kind of game?" I managed not to say anything at that, mostly because she looked like she was only just gathering steam. She pointed at the suit of armor in my locker. "A lot of good men and women died wearing that uniform while you treat it like a damn joke!"

For a few seconds I just looked at her, not sure what to say. I had no clue where she got the idea I thought this was all a joke (except, perhaps, a cosmic one of extremely poor taste), and I thought I had done pretty well getting Nihlus out of trouble (not that she'd know, of course, unless she had a copy of Mass Effect to see him getting shot in the head). When I moved to speak, she just raised her hand to silence me.

"You asked what my problem was, now you know," she said, and without another word, she stowed the rifle away and headed off to the lift.

Great. So she's pissed about the geth killing her unit, which was understandable, and had decided to take it out on me, with sucked, because she thought I wasn't taking it seriously.

Well, fuck it. I waited until she was in the lift, while examining the suit, and once the lift closed, I decided to put it all on. I took the undersuit, stripped down to my undies, and got myself in it, stirring uncomfortably where it irritated the rashes. I hoped it'd be more comfortable than this once I got them sorted out. After that, I opened my omni-tool and followed the instructions piece by piece. It took me nearly ten minutes (regulation standards said to train until it could be put on and taken off in less than sixty seconds), but when I snapped the last piece in and put the helmet on, the HUD greeted me with an all-green signal.

So I _could _do it after all.

I went through the drill five or six times, not really making a dent on the time (the rear clasps were a _bitch_ to get to, specially with a dud arm), until I got bored and put the suit back in the locker. I wasn't going to have to put it on in a hurry any time soon. Maybe I'd have it repainted once I got to the Citadel, just to shut Ashley up.

Which reminded me I was flat broke. Maybe I could trade the geth rifle in, then get a shotgun and a painjob for the armor.

Or a new suit of armor. Actually, I had no idea how much I'd get for a geth rifle, or how much a hardsuit went for in real life.

_Real life, heh._

Regardless, in-game, a grade I piece of equipment cost something like two hundred credits, and a grade X item somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand times that, which seemed rather ridiculous. Specially if Shepard and co. were wearing and using grade I crap, while being special ops and all the jazz. I'd have to ask Shepard, what's one more thing to look like an idiot about anyway?

With that, I locked the locker, and went back to the crew deck. Despite having been out since the mission ended until a couple of hours before, I was feeling rather drained. The arm was feeling much better, but I decided not to move it out of the sling. Getting into the pod was a little bit of an adventure, and I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to sleep, given that it didn't really go completely horizontal, but instead I fell asleep within minutes.

* * *

><p>They were after me. I could hear the shouts, and the shooting. There were corpses everywhere, and every time I ran into someone, said someone would be blown to hell as I ran past them. I didn't have a coherent thought in my head, all I could think was <em>run!<em>

An explosion rocked everything, and I fell into a hole, which soon started filling up with the dead bodies of all the people I had left behind. I couldn't breathe.

I opened my eyes with a gasp, and banged my head against the glass in front of me. I was trapped. I clawed desperately at the window, then around me, trying to find a way out.

"Roy!"

With a hiss, the pod opened, and I would have bolted out of there, if it hadn't been for Shepard putting her arm on my chest. You know how, in the movies, they often show people bolting awake and shouting when they're having a nightmare (sweating optional)? Well, it wasn't quite like that. I've had nightmares before, but freaking hell that was something else. It took me an eternity to get my bearings again.

"You were having a nightmare," Shepard said.

"Oh shit," I muttered, and let myself fall back into the pod. Shepard poked her head over the edge of the pod, a smile tugging at her lips. "Did I wake- Wait, what time is it?"

"Oh five twenty," she said, after a quick look at her omni-tool. "And I was already awake."

"You're up early."

"Eh, I don't sleep much," she said with a shrug, and with a tap on the pod, she left me alone.

The mere idea of trying to go back to sleep seemed ridiculous, I was _really _awake now. So, with a sigh, I pulled myself off the pod, and made towards the kitchen. Shepard was sitting with her back towards the pods, nursing a steaming cup of coffee.

I sat down in front of her, rubbing my face.

"Not a morning cat?" Shepard said.

"Not like this, no..."

"Want to talk about it?"

"Huh?" I looked at her in surprise, and she just shrugged at me.

"Eh, I figured it's probably something to do with Eden Prime. Your first time in combat?"

"First time seeing people being blown to bits," I replied, my eyes drifting down to her cup of coffee.

"Yeah."

"How do you do it Shepard?" I said, looking at her in the eyes. She returned my gaze, a very palpable intensity behind the look.

"If you want me to say that it gets easier, it doesn't. I still see the faces of the men, women, and children that I failed to help. But I'll tell you what my parents told me after Akuze."

_Shit, Akuze? That sucks balls._

"It's not about who you lose, it's about who you help. Sometimes you lose people even after you tried your best, and that's all you can do. Sometimes you didn't do your best, and the only thing left is to do better next time. As I understand, if it weren't for you, Nihlus would be dead now."

"But all those people..."

"Not much you could have done without a gun and some kinetic barriers," Shepard replied, shrugging. "It's hard to swallow, but sometimes the odds are truly insurmountable."

I nodded. Intellectually, I could see her point, but it didn't make me feel much better. A little, maybe.

"I guess so. Thanks Shepard."

She stood, and gave me a slap on the shoulder before making for the kitchen. "You sure you don't want some coffee?"

"Nah, I'm good. I better go get a shower."

"Roy," she said, catching my attention. "The sonic cleaner next to the shower will clean your clothes while you're in. Instructions are on your manual," she added, her eyes amused and with a mischievous grin.

"Cool, thanks."

After cleaning up, and failing to find a way to shave the stubble (can you believe there isn't a holoshave app for the omni-tool? I figured an omni-blade would be a little excessive though), I was feeling a lot better. I got out of the shower, only to find that Anderson was already up.

"Oh Roy, good morning. You're just in time."

"Morning, Captain," I said. "In time for what?"

"Nihlus just woke up, come with us."

"Huh?" I said. Which I came to realize it was starting to sound like my signature catchphrase.

"You're our resident prothean beacon expert," he said, not without a hint of irony.

With a mental shrug, I followed them in, and found Chakwas running scans on the turian.

"So," Anderson said, trying to inject some good natured humor in his voice. "How is our resident Spectre?"

Nihlus said something I couldn't understand. Anderson and Shepard both nodded, which confused me to no end, until I realized he was obviously speaking turian.

_That's gonna be a problem._

"Physically you're fine," Chakwas said. "And Roy's assessment was correct. A neural inhibitor regime sped up your recovery. The symptoms were very similar to an overload from asari melding."

Again, Nihlus said something, looked at me, and when I didn't answer, everyone turned to look at me. Yay, I love being the center of attention. Not.

"Err... Timmy fell into a well?" I offered.

Nobody laughed. Oh, come on! It was funny!

"You have no implants, do you?" Shepard said.

"Uh... no."

"Really?" Nihlus said, now speaking English. The rumble of his voice really did give him a strange accent. "That is unusual."

"Yeah, that's me. So, the beacon hit you?" I offered, furiously trying to change the subject.

"More like it grabbed me. Got to the port too late to stop Saren. I was just done mopping up some geth when the beacon pulled me in."

"What happened?" Anderson said, taking control of the conversation.

"It... put something in my head. A vision."

"I detected unusual readings from your brainwaves while you were out," Chakwas said. "I couldn't be sure, since turians usually don't dream when they sleep."

"Spirit dreams. But I wasn't dreaming. It was more like a nightmare," Nihlus deadpanned.

"Yeah, plenty of those around, apparently," I muttered. Turians must have very sharp hearing, because she looked at me like he had heard me perfectly, but given that I wasn't joking, he didn't seem offended by my remark.

"I saw synthetics, killing organics. There was this feeling of dread, danger. Telling me to run away. That destruction was inevitable."

"Roy?" Shepard said.

I shrugged. "We still don't know how the protheans went extinct. Maybe they got their own geth revolution."

"So why haven't we found any of those synthetics?" Nihlus said.

"Beats me. Maybe we haven't found the prothean homeworld. Like the geth not leaving... uh... the quarian planet?"

"Rannoch," Anderson said. He then turned to Nihlus. "We have a bigger problem. The mission was a failure, the beacon was destroyed... and Saren."

"Yeah. Saren," Nihlus said. His subvocals growled angrily, with his mandibles clicking loudly on his lower jaw.

"We'll have to bring this to the Council."

"I know. Did you get a good look at him, Commander?"

"Not really," Shepard said. "All I saw was a grey turian running away when we started shooting. Roy here did."

"No offense, but I'm not sure they'll consider the word of a lone civilian, it'll be Saren's word against mine."

"It'll have to do," Anderson said.

"Wait," I said, interrupting the conversation. "Saren shot you, you _saw_ him do it, and the Council will pretend that nothing happened? Seriously?"

"Saren's their top Spectre," Nihlus said. "At best they may investigate, but I know him. Unless we have some evidence, him caught red handed, he won't leave any trail. Was there no footage from security cameras at the spaceport? Nothing?"

"No," Shepard said. "Pretty much all electronics were fried when the geth attacked. All we have is the transmission the chief made from the surface."

"Yes, that," Nihlus muttered. "Oh Spirits," he then said out loud. "Shepard, do you have it with you?"

"Err... Give me a sec," she replied, bringing her omni-tool up. "Why? Did you remember something?"

"The ship," Nihlus said, shaking his head. "It can't be."

Finally, Shepard found the clip she was looking for on her omni-tool and, with a swipe, she sent it to Nihlus' own. He brought it up, and watched as Ash shouted at the camera. It was absolute chaos. I hadn't seen the clip, and, unlike in-game, it looked horrific. I recognized where they were, an open area not far from where I found the armor and gun. Then all looked away in shock, and the camera turned to show Sovereign arriving.

Shit, that was terrifying. More so because I did see Sovereign from the surface, and the video really brought the memories back.

"That's the ship. Spirits help me, the ships from my vision."

"What?" Shepard and Anderson both said.

"My vision. Synthetics and organics. I... I saw a ship like that. Saren's working with whatever destroyed the protheans."

I must have looked rather silly, because I was pretty sure my eyebrows were higher than I had ever felt them. Right there, Nihlus had jumped several chapters ahead; the whole "Saren is trying to resurrect the reapers" thing was supposed to come later. Well, good, maybe we could get the Council to listen and grab Saren before a whole mess of people had to die.

"Why would he do that?" Shepard said.

"I don't know Shepard," Nihlus replied, his voice low. Even though I wasn't quite there when it came to reading alien facial expressions, I could tell he was shocked. It was easy to forget that Saren had been his mentor in the Spectres.

Chakwas gave us a look, and very quickly we all got the hint. Shepard and I made ourselves scarce, while Anderson stayed behind, standing next to Nihlus and saying something to him in a low voice. I made something about the council and setting up a meeting, but that was it.

"So, what do you think?" Shepard said, as we made our way to the stairs at the back of the ship.

"Me?" She nodded. "Err... It's a little far-fetched. Except that I saw the bloody giant ship myself." _And I know it's all _freaking true, but nevermind that. "What about you?"

"Yeah, it may be a hard sell with the Council. Eh, we'll see. No point dwelling on it before we get to the Citadel."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>Hey, while on the subject of effing with canon when I'm supposed not to, why the hell not? If I recall correctly, the first time you're shown the random images of the beacon in-game you do see the ship, as a wireframe silhouette. So, Nihlus is smarter than Shepard when it comes to connecting the dots. Now you know.

And yay for Roy managing to avoid unwanted attention without making people suspicious!

Thanks for all the reviews, follows, and everything else!

**Mizuki00**, yep, "trainwreck" is pretty much what I'm going for here (I'm really good at those IRL!). As far as the omni-tool, the way I see it, think of it as a long and very flat electronic gizmo with a strap on each of the long ends, wrap them around the forearm, and everything's holographic (interface and all).

**Archer83**, yep, not the best first impression Roy could have made! :D

Until next time, when we'll see what else Roy manages to screw up in his adventures!


	5. Chapter 5

We were on our way to the Citadel. Of course, I knew that, but I kinda hadn't thought about it. A stupid smile made its way to my face. I have to admit, I _was _looking forward to it. Even though the thing was a massive trap set up by the reapers to lure all sentients into their fold and annihilate them in one fell swoop. But hey, maybe we'd find a way to stop it, assuming I could somewhat tell Shepard about everything I knew without the ghosty white AI getting in the way.

Come to think of it, I hadn't had any more out-of-body experiences with her. Wait, that sounded all wrong. Again.

A snapping of fingers brought me out of my reverie. Shepard was snapping them in front of my face.

"Back with us?" she said. I shrugged, and she smirked at that. "You have the strangest habit of spacing out in the middle of a conversation."

"Sorry," I said sheepishly. "Kinda have a lot in my mind. Never thought I'd see the Citadel."

"Center of the galaxy, heart of civilization, yadda yadda," Shepard replied.

"What, you don't like it?"

"Not really. There's something wrong about the place, I can't quite put my finger on what."

_Smart girl._

We were now at the CIC, with the map of the galaxy floating in the middle and a whole lot of activity already under way. There were a lot of sleepy faces, but everyone was clean cut and professional looking. I just realized that I had followed Shepard up for absolutely no reason. She nodded as people greeted her, which meant most were ignoring me, and made it to the cockpit.

Outside, all I could see was a cloud of purple. Very strange. I was in freaking space though.

_SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!_

"Commander, I'm about to bring us in," Joker said. He then looked back and saw me behind Shepard, probably drooling like an idiot as I looked out. "Did he follow you home?"

"Yeah, and the Captain's letting me keep him!" Shepard replied, big silly smile on her face.

"Well fine, but you have to feed him and take him out for walks."

"Aww, okay."

I came into the middle of the conversation, so I missed what they were saying, but still, I did notice the way they were looking at me.

"What? I don't think I've ever seen space like this," I said, completely missing the conversation.

"So how did you get to Eden Prime?" Shepard replied, not missing a beat.

"I... There wasn't a window view, trust me."

Apparently I wasn't the only one excited about the view, because both Ashley and Alenko had made their way to the cabin, and were looking out the window. The purple haze seemed to thin a bit, and out of the mist, approaching _very_ quickly, appeared the Citadel.

It's hard to gauge size in space, but when I finally spotted which one of the distant dots was the _Destiny Ascension_, I realized how freaking _big_ the Citadel really was. Once we were closer, Ash and Alenko both started _Ooh_ing and _Aah_ing at the ship.

"Look at the size of that thing!" Ash said.

"And the guns," I added.

"What, jealous much?" she said.

"Me?" I said. I was genuinely surprised, because that didn't make any sense. "Ask the pilot, I don't really care."

"Pfft!"

"Hey, size ain't everything, you need firepower too!" Joker chimed in.

I ignored the rest of the conversation and turned to Shepard. Nihlus had come up to the cabin as well, and the two of them were exchanging some jokes about us. Well, it was mostly Shepard saying we were like schoolgirls, which apparently was flying over the turian's head, much to the commander's amusement.

"Shepard?" I said.

"Yeah?"

"What's the plan once we get to the Citadel?"

"Nihlus' got to report to the Council," she said, pointing at the Turian with her thumb. "And we're going to talk to my favourite person in the galaxy, ambassador Udina."

"Right away?"

"Yeah, why? There'll be time for sightseeing later."

"Well, I was thinking of finding a gun shop and see if I could trade that geth rifle I got for a decent shotgun." I stopped to think. "And give the armor I've got a new coat of paint."

"Huh? I thought we fixed it."

"No, that's not it. It's mostly so that I don't go around showing Alliance colours I don't own," I said. I wasn't sure if Ash was listening, and didn't bother turning to check.

"Bring the gear with you then," Shepard said. "You can go after we're done with Udina."

"All righty. And speaking of, you guys know a good shop for that in the citadel?"

"Yeah," Nihlus said. He raised his omni-tool, typed a few things, and a moment later my own omni-tool pinged with an incoming message. "Guy's called Serrus, he owes me a favour or two. Show him the message and he'll give you a good deal."

"Awesome, thanks."

The light coming from the outside dimmed for a moment, and I turned to see we were getting very close to the docking bay. Damn, I had missed the approach.

"Go get your stuff," Shepard said. "We're here."

I made my way to the back, and _very _slowly down to the cargo bay. The armor was right where I had left it, and I had it in its casing in no time. What I didn't have was a case for the assault rifle, so I just folded it, and hung it over my shoulder using the harness that was supposed to be for my pistol and kinetic barrier.

It didn't cross my mind that it may raise a few questions when I went through C-sec, since in-game you go around in full combat gear and nobody bats an eyelash, but I did have to have Nihlus clear me to go through.

I also noticed that the rest of the squad were looking from the other side of the C-sec security line with barely disguised smiles as this all happened.

"I'll get in touch once I've talked to the Council," Nihlus said once we got to the Presidium.

The place was freaking amazing. I heard Ashley say something about being a little _too_ perfect, which wasn't too far by half, and then I lost half the conversation because Nihlus started speaking turian. The futuristic construction was amazing, but most of all, it was the freaking space.

_SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE._

No, not that one, although the purple haze that could be seen between the arms of the Citadel was quite striking too. But the fact that it was an artificial construct, and it had so much open space, was breathtaking.

Seeing the business end of the conduit standing by the lake, however, did break the spell a little bit. The thing was really imposing, a perfect replica of a mass relay. I knew it was a _real_ one, but apparently, in two thousand years or so, nobody had noticed.

* * *

><p>"Captain Anderson," Udina greeted us when we entered his office. "I see you brought your whole crew with you." He gave me a disgusted look, looking me up and down, and apparently decided I wasn't worth spending his breath on.<p>

Yes, he _was _an ass, and it showed from the first second he opened his mouth. And the way Shepard was looking at him, her quip about him being her favourite person in the galaxy was put into proper context.

"Just the ground team and material witness, in case you had any questions."

"I saw the report, I assume it's accurate."

"It is," Anderson replied. Yeah, he didn't like Udina either.

Wait a minute, wasn't he supposed to be screaming at the Council when we walked in? I had spent some time thinking about the original Mass Effect and trying to remember details, and this was one of the ones that really jumped at me. Udina shouting and the Council scratching their collective a-

"Commander Shepard," Udina said, interrupting my train of thought. His voice was dripping with sarcasm, and I saw Shepard tensing ever so slightly.

"Ambassador," she replied.

"I see your record for messing up pickup missions continues to improve."

"What can I say, a girl's gotta make her job fun," she said, and grinned. The kind of grin one sees on a wolf before he devours a helpless bunny. "I just couldn't resist the chance to have a planetary invasion and a rogue Spectre."

"This is your idea of fun?" he snorted.

"Not exactly, but since I can't legally rip your eyes out and there are witnesses, it'll have to do," she said.

_That _got Udina's attention, and for a moment I thought the two of them were about to come to blows. For the record, I'd have fifty credits on Shepard, if I had had any credits to my name at all.

"Enough you two," Anderson said, stepping between the two of them. "This is not the time for pissing contests." Woah, that was Anderson? Nice. I _really_ was having a great positive impact in the galaxy. I didn't even have to open my mouth this time.

"You don't even realize the situation you've put me in! Humanity looks weak, we lost a prothean beacon within days of finding it! And geth? Really? How do you think that's going to go down? The Council demanded I explain what we did to provoke them to leave the Veil!"

"Yeah, I'll be sure to remind them it was my fault," Shepard said.

"Shepard," Anderson grunted, getting the silence he demanded in return. "The geth were being led by Saren, and he has gotten his hands on a dreadnought that makes our Everest-class look like a canoe."

"So you mentioned. I've seen the footage, and I didn't see Saren anywhere."

"Nihlus did, pretty damn close," Shepard said. She then gestured at me. "And so did Roy."

"With all due respect to this... individual," Udina said, giving me the same kind of glance one gives to a piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom of one's shoe, "the council won't take something like this on their top Spectre just on their word."

"I knew I should have asked Saren for his autograph," Shepard said.

Udina looked like he was about to blow a gasket again, which made me wonder just how awesome hypertension medication had to be in the future, but they were interrupted by a series of pings. First Udina's omni-tool, then Anderson's and Shepard's.

"The Council has agreed to a hearing about this," Udina said.

"Yeah, you can thank Nihlus for that. Oh wait, you don't know what that word means," Shepard said.

"You better save your limited smarts for the Council," Udina said. "Because I can tell you they won't lift a finger with the evidence you have."

"We'll see about that," Shepard said. Without another word, she turned around, and the three of us – Ash, Kaidan, and I – took after her like ducklings after the duck mother.

"And that's why I hate politicians," Ash said as soon as the door closed behind her.

"You know Shepard, I have an unlicensed geth rifle, and I'm not in any Alliance database. I could probably get away with it," I said.

She chuckled at that. "Don't tempt me," she said, and kept walking down towards the presidium. "We'll be meeting with the council in one hour, so until then feel free to do your own thing."

"I should probably go shopping then," I said.

"Commander Shepard!"

There was a man by the embassy wing entrance calling Shepard, so she just gave me a nod and made towards him. I took off, while Shepard and the others stopped to talk to him, and went for Avina's terminal.

"Welcome to the Citadel, I am AVINA. I-"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm looking for Serrus Guns, how can I get there from here?"

"Serrus Guns is located at the markets of Zakera ward. A Rapid Transport shuttle would be able to take you to your destination in four minutes and twenty seconds."

"I don't have money for that," I said.

"Take the lift to the C-sec academy, then follow the marked path," Avina replied. A map appeared on the VI's display, showing a long blue line twisting and turning through the bowels of the Citadel.

There was a "Download to omni-tool" option, which Avina was kind enough to explain without any snide remarks, and soon I was on my way. It was quite a long way, and it took me the best part of thirty minutes to get there.

The markets of Zakera ward looked _very_ different from what I remembered in-game. If I recalled it correctly, it was just a collection of tiny stalls with NPCs acting as shops, but here there were real shops. And holy hell but there were a _lot _of them. And they were loud too, I got quite a few people shouting at me that they had what I needed, which pretty much meant I either looked like a customer, or someone had stapled the word _sucker_ to my back.

I did check my back to make sure there was nothing there. I wouldn't put it past Ash.

The shop wasn't too hard to find, and it was one of the biggest shops in the markets. There were guns and armor suits lined up on the walls behind locked glass displays, and a dark-skinned turian with blue facepaint in a simple, asymmetric pattern was behind the counter.

He growled something unintelligible, which gave me a pause for about a second.

"Sorry, I don't have a translator implant, do you-"

Without missing a beat, he fiddled with something on his omni-tool, and the next time he talked, his voice echoed through it, translated into English. Damn, that's handy.

"Can I help you?" he said, interrupting me. Jeez, he didn't sound too friendly. Did I remember to shower this morning? I thought I did.

"I hope so," I replied, hauling the armor case up to the counter, and dropping the rifle on top of it. "I'm looking to trade this rifle for a decent shotgun, and a new paintjob for my armor. Nihlus said you'd give me a good deal."

"Nihlus," he deadpanned.

"Yeah. Big bad Spectre, white facepaint," I said, as I opened my omni-tool. I flicked to the message he had sent me, and showed it to him.

Now, as I have said repeatedly, I wasn't too good at reading turian facial expressions, but the look of amazement he had was pretty easy to spot.

"What the s'kak?" he growled. "What did he... and you..."

I was about to answer when I realized I probably shouldn't discuss Spectre problems out in the open.

"Spectre stuff, so I probably can't tell you. Suffice to say, he was at the business end of a gun at the wrong time, and I managed to save his ass."

"Turians don't have asses," he said.

"Figure of speech."

"Let me get this right. Nihlus, _Nihlus_, owes you a favour," he pointed at my omni-tool for emphasis, "because you saved his life?"

"That's the gist of it."

For a moment I had no idea what he was about to do, then he basically cracked up laughing, so much so that he had to sit down on the stool behind the counter.

"By... by you? Seriously?" he said between laughts.

"Yeah I know, I don't really look the part, do I?" I deadpanned.

"Aw that's rich!" he said, and had to stop talking to laugh some more. "Oh he's going to pay for it the next time I see him. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

I waited patiently for him to stop laughing, and when he finally did, he simply waved me closer as he looked at my pile of gear.

"Right, so what do we have here?" he rumbled. He picked up the rifle, and unfolded it all business-like. "A geth pulse rifle," he said immediately. "Spirits, you don't see these very often. Working?"

"Sure is," I said, and the right quote came to mind right there. "Never been fired, only dropped once."

Serrus looked up at me, and a moment later started chuckling. With a shake of his head, he went to the back of the shop, and disappeared past the door there. A few seconds later I heard the telltale sound of the geth rifle being fired, and his voice rumbling something I couldn't understand.

When he came back, he was cradling the rifle in a perfectly relaxed grip, muzzle pointed down and looking as if it was exactly where the gun belonged. Damn turians, even a shopkeeper was capable of making me look like an amateur.

Come to think of it, I _was_ an amateur.

"Very nice. These are always in demand with R&D for guns manufacturers, I'll give you ninety thousand for it. Just this once," he said, and his mandibles clicked once in amusement.

"Great!" I replied. I had been looking at the prices of the guns in his shop, and that was quite a chunk of money.

"So what are you after?" he said, taking the armor case and opening it.

"Well, I've got that as a hands-me-down, so I was thinking of giving it a new coat of paint. Though it may be better to just get a new one... I'm also after a shotgun."

"Let's see. Hm, Alliance standard. Kinetic barriers on these are _s'kak_, but the plates are pretty good," he said, and gave the ceramic plates on the armor a tap with his knuckles for emphasis. "Best use of credits would be to get an upgrade for the electronics. You want it painted too?"

"Yeah."

"Just use the terminal there," he said, pointing at it. "Choose the pattern and it does it automatically."

"Sweet," I replied, and went to said terminal.

It was much easier to use than the freaking omni-tool, and the amount of available patterns was just mindblowing. However, I didn't really have time to get elaborate, nevermind the fact that my artistic abilities are next to non-existent, so I decided to cut to the chase.

"What pattern would you recommend to look _less _like a tasty target?" I said.

Once again, Serrus chuckled rather loudly, and this time he came around the counter to get his hands on the terminal. He started flicking through the options, and finished on a grey/green/black pattern, with broken edges on the paint blotches and a very strange look.

"Here you go. This is the standard for hierarchy military, for small unit ground combat."

"It's... weird," I said.

"That's the idea. Melds well with a wide array of terrains and situations, breaks your silhouette, all the good stuff."

"Ok, sounds good. I'll take it."

"Good. Now, take a look at this."

He showed me the different upgrade options I had for the armor. While it was designed to have only one augmentation, there were aftermarket parts that could be used to add an extra interface to a suit of that design. Apparently they were popular enough as military surplus that there was a good market for modifications.

I settled for a straight kinetic barrier – which gave me two layers, very different from how things worked in the game – and a medi-gel dispensing medical interface. It was a fairly basic one, but better than nothing. The more advanced medical interfaces couldn't be jury-rigged like that, and they were expensive to boot.

Total was twenty thousand credits, which was 50% off the listed price. When it came to shotgun, the choice was rather easy. Human manufacturers fit best when I tested them on the small range at the back of the shop, and credits available dictated what I was going to get. I ended up with a basic Armageddon, from Kassa Fabrication, with a rail extension to narrow the spread of the shots. With the modifications it felt very familiar in my hands, and the feedback was excellent too. Not much of a kick, and felt solid all around.

I had enough left over to grab a cheap pistol (Elanus Striker, which Serrus promised was miles better than the crap pistol I had liberated back on Eden Prime), and even to walk out with five thousand credits. He also threw in a tungsten ammo block for each weapon for free, which was quite nice of him.

"I'll have the armor and your shotgun ready in about an hour or so," Serrus said, handing me the pistol.

"Thanks. I've got stuff to do, so I'll be back later." I put the pistol in its holster, and secured it in place.

"Anything else? Next time it'll be full price," he said, chuckling.

"Nah, it should do for now. Thanks a lot, I appreciate it."

"Don't sweat it, you humans get all stinky when you do," the turian said. "And tell Nihlus he's not getting out of explaining how he ended up needing you to bail his fringe," he added with another chuckle.

"Will do."

I checked the time as I left, and realized I had but fifteen minutes before the Council would see us. With money in my pocket – well, in my chit, but you get the gist of it – I rushed to the nearest pharmacy, and got myself some toiletries. After that, with ten minutes to go, I just went to the rapid transit station and got myself a ride to the tower.

The first thing that weirded me out was that there was no pilot. The second thing was how fucking fast the thing moved, and how damn close to everything – including other rapid transit shuttles – it flew. We're talking fast enough the outside world was a blur, and near enough to everything I _felt_ vibrations through the hull whenever we passed something. As we zipped up between lanes of traffic, I held onto my seat and closed my eyes, cursing internally at the freaking white-skinned mysterious AI that had decided to throw me into the Mass Effect universe.

When the shuttle finally came to a stop, and Avina announced we had arrived, I bolted out of the thing like it was on fire. So much so that I stumbled on my way out and faceplanted in a very unbecoming way.

And yeah, the Council tower is always packed with people, so it was a hell of an entrance. I counted fifteen different pairs of eyes looking at me before I gave up, and one of them was Captain Anderson.

He chuckled and came to give me a hand, but I was already up when he did.

"Are you okay Roy?" he said.

"Yeah," I replied, giving the shuttle the stinkeye. "Who the hell programmed those things? I thought I was going to get killed!"

"Yeah," Anderson laughed softly. "There's a reason why the embassies are so close to the tower."

"… You're kidding."

"Oh no, not at all. When the human embassy opened here first, it was on a different arm of the citadel. After the first official meeting with the Council, it got changed in a hurry."

As he spoke, the shuttle lifted off again, and shot off through the top access at a ridiculous speed, the wind of it wafting noticeably around the chamber. Damn crazy contraptions.

"I see you have been shopping," Anderson said, eyeing the pistol. He raised his hand to stop me right when I was about to reach for it, and shook his head. "This is not the best place to brandish weapons around."

"Ah, good point," I replied sheepishly. "Yeah, got this, a shotgun, and a new painjob for the armor I'm borrowing."

"New paintjob?" he said.

The question was innocent enough, but my spider senses started tingling immediately. Of course, most of the time they tingle for absolutely no reason. Call me paranoid.

I think I just stole Joker's line.

"Yeah. I'm not Alliance, so it makes sense to paint over the alliance colours," I replied, as non-chalant as I could. "Though if you'd rather I give it back, let me know."

Anderson gave me a glare, which made me clench my butt, and keep repeating _'don't flinch, don't flinch' _in my head, but after a few seconds he just relaxed and shook his head.

"We already discussed this with Williams," he said, looking away towards the lifts. Udina had just arrived, and was making his way towards us.

_Wait, was he testing me to see if I'd complain and rat her out? Jeez, I really have to stay on my toes here with these people._

"Where is Shepard?" Udina said, in his particularly annoying, grating voice.

"She'll be here," I replied, a little snappish.

Udina snorted. "Reliable as always," he said. "Not that it will make much difference."

"Really? I bet you a million credits it will," I said, annoyed.

Udina ignored me and turned to Anderson. "Make sure you send her up as soon as she arrives... _If _she arrives." He then left, grumbling to himself. "Damn woman, and I get stuck with the political shitstorm."

I shook my head, biting my tongue trying not to say anything. The Council was in session, and while we were far enough that I couldn't really hear them, I could see them up on their "pedestals". And Udina was already shouting at them. I also saw that Nihlus was there, and the way he was looking at Udina, he wasn't too happy with him either.

"Does anyone like that guy?" I said.

"Udina is a political animal," Anderson replied. "He can be useful."

"If you say so, Captain."

After a few minutes, I saw the gigantic holographic projection of Saren come to life, and boy did that liven up the proceedings. I actually _heard_ the turian councillor shouting this time – only it was in Turian, so I had no idea what he was saying – and finally manage to get the shouting match under control.

I was starting to wonder if Shepard was going to make it when a Rapid Transit shuttle shot inside the building, to land next to us. Shortly after, the Commander made her way out of it, followed by a pair of somewhat sickly looking Alliance officers.

Shepard, on the other hand, was giggling.

"These shuttles never get old," she said, and slapped Alenko on the back. "Are we late? Fashionably so, no?"

"Come on, the Council meeting has already started."

Anderson led the way, and the four of us followed him up the stairs. Now that we were closer, I could hear the discussion. Nihlus and Saren were shouting at each other, and heavens knows what they were saying. After a few seconds, the Asari councillor called to order.

"Is this the video you are referring to?" she said, talking to Udina, and waved her hand over her terminal. As she did, a large holoscreen appeared in the space between us and the Council, and started playing a cam-view of a firefight.

I made out Nihlus voice, and him shouting "Saren!" There was more, but hey, no translator. It didn't take long to realize it was the video from the Eden Prime docks. The cam-view was showing Nihlus trying to shoot from behind cover, but didn't manage to get a single shot of Saren.

And Saren wasn't speaking, so he couldn't be identified via voice either.

Once the camera dropped to the ground, the image paused.

"As you can see, your claims are not corroborated by your recording," the Asari – _Tevos? I think her name was Tevos – _said. The argument continued, with me missing half of it. The fact that Nihlus had only started recording when the firefight with Saren started didn't help.

So, since I didn't have much to do, I looked at the recording screen. It was actually showing a HUD. It was in Turian, so I couldn't tell what it said, but it was familiar enough. Armor status, some counter on the side, a couple of gauges, probably for weapon heat, and a red dot down on the corner.

Red dot.

_Wait a goddamn minute._

"Psht, Alenko," I whispered.

"Yeah?"

"What's the red dot there on the corner?" I suspected what it was, but I'd better confirm it.

"Just the indicator that the camera was recording," he replied.

"Oh shit," I said, a little too loud. I got a cross look from Shepard, but everyone else ignored me. I brought up my omni-tool, and started to frantically go through the options, looking for anything resembling a media collection.

"There's the matter of the Prothean beacon," Shepard said.

"What, am I supposed to defend myself against visions and prophecies? This is ridiculous!" Saren replied, in English. For effect I bet. What an ass.

"They are not visions," Shepard replied. "Roy?"

_Huh? What?_

I looked up, and saw all eyes on me. Luckily my brain got in gear fast enough, so I was able to make a passable argument.

"Visions is a misnomer," I said, and for some reason decided to raise my right index finger for emphasis. "Prothean beacons work like an Asari mind-meld, placing recorded information directly into the user's brain. But since Nihlus here isn't a prothean, it all came up a little jumbled. That, and the beacon was apparently quite damaged."

"That's right," Nihlus said, looking at me, and then turned to Saren. "I saw the ship, Saren. _Your_ ship."

I zoned out again, until I felt a sharp elbow on my ribs.

"What the hell are you doing?" Shepard said in a low voice. She sounded pissed.

"I think I have a recording of Eden Prime in my omni-tool."

She didn't answer, so I looked up at her, and was treated to a close view of Shepard looking completely surprised. Now _that's_ something you don't see every day.

"What the hell? Why didn't you mention it!"

"I didn't know," I replied. "It just clicked now, I think I had my helmet cam on."

Without warning, she yanked my arm towards her, and started browsing through my omni-tool. We were making a bit of a ruckus, so much so that Tevos seemed to get annoyed.

"Do you have any further evidence to present?" she said. I swear she sounded like a teacher telling her student to share with the class.

"Yes!" Shepard replied, not looking up. She flicked very quickly through the various menus, and then, with a rather theatrical swipe, she sent the video from my omni-tool to the large holoscreen.

The video started playing, and it was indeed my helmet-cam. I was about to say something akin to _fuck yea!,_ but then I realized it had started recording when I was still trying to put my armor on.

"Shit, Shepard! Fast forward this part!" I said.

Too late. The _me _on the screen fumbled putting the lower part of the armor on, and with a very heartfelt curse, the armored pants fell to the ground. And thus, the Council was treated to a view of my underwear from my own point of view.

I heard Ash start laughing, and she wasn't the only one. The reaction was mixed, however, with Saren being the loudest one.

"What is this? A joke? What are these humans-"

"Oh shut up!" I yelled, trying very hard to ignore the burning on my face. I had found the controls, so I proceeded to fast forward past the boring bits, until I got to the tram docks.

_That_ did the trick.

I heard myself shouting "Nihlus!", then saw how I drew the pistol, and started shooting. Shepard gave a whistle of appreciation when the first shot hit Saren on the arm at something like fifty metres range, and then, the gray-skinned turian turned to look at me.

Oh yeah. Full frontal shot of his ugly mug.

"You wanted proof? There it is!" Udina shouted, not missing a beat. Man, the asshole sounded so supremely _smug _that _I _wanted to punch him, even if he was rubbing Saren's face on it. Take a moment to consider _that._

"What is this, some doctored video? This is fake! That's not even me!" Saren shouted, going for the _throw everything at the wall and see what sticks_ approach.

Shepard grabbed my arm, pulled the omni-tool to herself, and started messing with the video. She went back to the frontal shot, paused it, then zoomed in to his face. And to my surprise, instead of a pixelated mess, the zoomed in image was perfectly clear, showing Saren in all his glory.

Or unglory. Infamy. Whatever.

Nice resolution, by the way. Cameras of the future sure are awesome.

"That is not doctored in any shape or form," Shepard replied, and pointed at my omni-tool. "It was recorded with standard alliance military encoding, you can verify the subchannel. Unless you are suggesting we broke the council's own encryptions just to plant you attacking Eden Prime."

"This is ridiculous! I will not stand here and be insulted!" Saren shouted.

"Spectre," Tevos said, her voice calm. _Way_ too calm, considering we had just rubbed her favourite Spectre's face on the dirt. She was looking at her console, and fiddling with something on it. "This evidence is irrefutable. The encryption codes are indeed standard alliance, this video has not been tampered with." She looked up at the holographic projection of Saren. "You have one last chance to explain your actions, and are commanded to return to the Citadel at once."

There was a pause, like the entire chamber was holding its breath. Of all the people there, Saren had chosen me to glare at. which was a lot less unsettling than you may think, thanks to him just being a holographic projection.

"You are all fools!" he finally shouted. "You have no idea what you are doing, I am trying to save the Galaxy!"

"By attacking Eden Prime? Killing innocent people?" Shepard said.

"By trying to kill me?" Nihlus added.

"Necessary sacrifices," he said dismissively. "Do not stand in my way, Nihlus. This is the only warning I will give you."

"I'll do more than stand in your way," Nihlus replied, and the growl was eloquent enough.

They switched back to turian, which left me out of the loop, but not the others. I decided to see how they were all taking the news. As far as the council went, Tevos looked... Damn, I really couldn't read alien expressions at all, even if they're supposed to be almost human. She had her eyes a little bit closed, and looked like she was not just listening to the discussion, but to some faraway voice speaking only to her. The Salarian councillor, whose name, to date, I still can't remember, was blinking at a fast pace and looking around as much as I was, only ten times faster.

The turian councillor... Um... Sparatus? Well, as I said, I wasn't too good at reading aliens, but _he _did look obvious enough. He looked like he was going to blow a gasket. Whatever the outcome, it wasn't going to be good for him. Two turian spectres fighting, and one of them sounding like he had gone off the deep end? Yeah, not a good day for the hierarchy.

I became aware that everyone was looking at me, including Saren.

"What's his problem now?" I said. "I don't have a translator."

"Oh, nothing, he just threatened you," Shepard replied, smirking.

"Right." I looked at him and shrugged. Maybe this was a good time to slide one in. "Cool story, bro. We don't really care about you though, so whatever."

_That _got a reaction, and not just from Saren. It was Shepard who went first.

"What are you talking about?"

"He's just a brainwashed idiot," I said, pointing at Saren while looking at Shepard. I was going to say more, but my vision started to go wavy, while the colour drained from the world.

_Oh crap_.

It turned out to be just a warning, because I wasn't yanked to the faraway place with the floating AI and all that jazz, but it sure put a dampener on my spirits. Damn, I can't get away with nothin'! Anyway, Shepard was still looking at me, and so was everyone else. I decided to play it by ear and stop spilling the beans for now.

"Point is," I said, and looked at Saren, "Saren, you aren't doing this to save the galaxy You _really_ think you're going to save anyone by working with the clankers?"

"You dimwitted-"

"Can you just cut the crap already?" I said, going for the _"I__'__m pissed so stop asking uncomfortable questions and focus on the turian" _approach. Which worked only because he wasn't there, and it was just a hologram. "Do you really think nobody has tried the same before? What exactly makes you so unique?"

He didn't answer, which wasn't a good sign. I wanted everyone focused on him, but given that he wasn't saying a word, way too many eyes were fixed on me. Then, without another word, the connection was cut, and Saren's holographic projection disappeared.

_Well, crap_.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>Well, there you have it. Udina's an ass, Shepard's got some history with him, and I meet a Turian shopkeeper.

Oh, and somewhat we skip the trial and fastforward it to the point that everyone knows Saren's gone cuckoo. Details! You did remember how I mentioned the blinking red dot on my HUD when I first tried to put my armor on, didn't you? Yep, I was recording! Remember, I'm a big fan of Chekov's gun, you never know what detail from how early may show up how late in the story!

(I know, that didn't make much sense. Read it three times out loud without catching your breath).

**Mizuki00**, turns out this Shepard's a spacer! And I never saw anything in-game about Shep's dad, so there you go :) Thanks a lot for the compliments!

**DrStache, **three internets for you for the grue reference :D

**Archer83, **thanks a lot! I intend to have some fun with Shepard for the time being, so yeah, she's got some personality. Then again, she's a sole survivor, that can't have happened without leaving something dark beneath the surface.

**Michae1ange1o**, you're catching on! As I said in the introduction, it won't be more than four or five chapters before you feel an urge to stab Roy _through_ the face. "Good lord!" is a perfectly acceptable reaction!

In our next episode! Will the council keep its track record of incompetence? Will Shepard be made Spectre? Will Roy have lunch? Tune in to My Effect: Convergence to find out! Tell your friends and family, and thank you for reading and/or reviewing! :D


	6. Chapter 6

un·der·state·ment

/ˈəndərˌstātmənt/

_noun_

noun: **understatement**; plural noun: **understatements**

the presentation of something as being smaller, worse, or less important than it actually is.

* * *

><p><em>Less than ideal.<em>

That was what came to mind when I realized the situation I was in. I had pretty much sprung on Saren, out of nowhere, that I pretty much _knew_ he was being indoctrinated, and why he was working for the reapers, and the freaking coward just disconnected his call, leaving me as the centre of attention. With the council, the entire human team - including Shepard - and even the freaking AI all having their eyes on me.

Yeah, _less than ideal_ may be an understatement.

Luckily, Udina and the council went at it, dragging all attention away from me, but I was distracted by Shepard pulling me to the side.

"What was all that about?" she said.

"I was throwing things at the wall to see what stuck," I said. Shepard looked unconvinced, so I tried to elaborate without giving much away. "Look, the guy's probably nuts, and he sounded like he had done some kind of pact-with-the-devil arrangement. I was just trying to play to his paranoia."

"Right," Shepard replied. He still was giving me the _'go on, keep digging__'_ look, but Anderson was calling for her attention. "We'll continue this later."

_Awesome_, I thought, and I was so not being sarcastic at all. Last time we _"continued this later" _I ended up getting full bad cop/bad cop treatment from Anderson and her.

The discussion with the council continued, only now everyone was using their native tongue, and I could only follow what the humans were saying. Half the time. Apparently Udina could speak Asari as well – or whatever their language is called – and was using it whenever he addressed Tevos. So I had no idea what was going on, until Anderson announced that the Normandy and her crew were still at the full disposal of the Spectre Nihlus.

So Nihlus was being sent with Shepard to hunt down Saren.

_Wait, that mean__s__ Shepard isn't being made Spectre yet._

Crapses on toast, now that was a fuck-up of galactic proportions. Did that mean Nihlus was in charge?

_Actually, that might be a good thing, he may be okay with bringing me along. I saved his life, after all._

Although I was pretty sure I still had to convince Shepard.

Once we were dismissed and the council left, the entire chamber was engulfed with the hubhub of excited conversation. A Spectre going rogue in such a spectacular fashion, with a geth armada at his disposal and having attacked a human colony? Yeah, big news.

"So, now what?" I said to no one in particular, trying to get a feel for what they were planning. I _really_ needed to get a translator.

"Now we get supplies and get ready to chase a rogue Spectre across half the galaxy," Anderson said. He sounded eager, and I knew why. I wondered if his history with Saren had come out yet.

"Yes," Udina said. "Anderson, come with me, we have much to prepare. This has gone far beyond the initial mission parameters."

"Right. I'll see you at the ship, Shepard. Nihlus," he said, nodding at them. They were about to take off when I remembered something.

"Hey Udina, you owe me a million credits," I said, not bothering to hide my smile.

The asshole stopped only enough to give me a cross look, and continued walking without saying anything. Anderson did chuckle, and took off after Udina.

"What was all that about?" Shepard said, while gesturing for us to follow her.

"Oh nothing, just a little wager we had. Don't expect him to follow through, tho."

We made it down the stairs at a more leisurely pace, until we got to the rapid transit terminal. _That_ was an experience I wasn't looking forward to repeating at all.

"So what's the plan Shepard?" I said.

"Get the ship ready. We'll have a few days at the Citadel first, we can't just take off in the blink of an eye. For one thing, we're still running a skeleton crew."

"Right."

"As for you," Shepard said, fixing her bluish-grayish-whatever eyes on me. "If you're really going to come along, I need two things from you."

"Okay?"

"First, we're going to have a conversation about protheans, and what you know."

That didn't sound promising, but I nodded.

"Second, you need training. If we had the time, I'd send you to bootcamp to get you up to speed, but we don't have three months to waste. So." She turned to Ash. "Chief, you're going to grab the FNG, grind him down to a pulp, and remake him into a soldier. You have a week."

"Do I have to walk on water and feed the krogan with two fishes and five loaves of bread too?" Ash replied.

"You can save that for next week," Shepard said, smirking.

"Fine, fine. I'll do what I can."

"Good. You still have your gear, right?" Shepard said, addressing me.

"Yeah, just having it repainted and upgraded down at the shop Nihlus recommended."

"Then that's where you're going. I'll see you at eighteen hundred, the Normandy."

Ash saluted Shepard, the commander returned it, and the three of them – Shepard, Alenko, and Nihlus – left for the lift.

"I've been told to do stupid things in my life, but this one takes the cake," Ash said, looking me up and down.

I didn't answer, although I was starting to get irritated at her constant belittling. I got that she was pissed off at the geth killing everyone, but it wasn't my fucking fault. I didn't particularly enjoy it either.

While I mused, the rapid transit shuttle had arrived, and Ashley gave me a shove towards it. With a sigh, I walked in, strapped myself tight, and prepared for the hellish ride.

"Where to?" Ash said.

"Zakera ward markets," I replied. The words were barely out of my mouth when the shuttle took off, and the crazy contraption started its heart-stopping high speed trip. "I fucking hate you Avina!" I shouted.

The one good thing about the crazy contraption was that it was fast as hell. No matter how sickening or insane the ride was, it was always over in a matter of minutes. The shuttle zigzaged through traffic like a bat out of hell, passed inches away from buildings at least half a dozen times, then finally dropped us unceremoniously on the upper level of the markets.

I could barely stand when I got out, and Ashley wasn't much better. We both stumbled like dunk idiots, me grabbing the nearest handrail, and Ash refusing to do so and just standing as straight as possible (with a noticeable sway), eyes closed and taking several deep breaths.

"Who the hell programmed those things?" I muttered.

"Let me know if you find out, because I'm going to break their legs," Ash replied. And yeah, she sounded like she meant it.

When we finally got our bearings back, we made our way back to Serrus', where the turian greeted me with a very friendly growl – and a switch of his omni-tool to make sure I understood him.

"Here you go, a fine piece if I say so myself," he said, presenting the shotgun to me.

I took the piece, unfolded it, and after making sure it wasn't loaded – by dropping the ammo block onto the counter; on purpose, I know what you were thinking – I put it to my shoulder and aimed it to the side. It _felt _right, the stock firm onto my shoulder, the gun searching targets even as I moved around. It had been made to measure, modifying the base model I had bought, even changing the length and shape of the gun itself. It was perfect.

"Armor's ready too. You should look less like a juicy target," Serrus said, tapping the pile on the counter.

Even before I could move a muscle, Ash opened the case and looked at it. It wasn't done in haste, or an abrupt manner. She did it smoothly, something she had done a thousand times, but I knew what she was doing. Looking to see what I had done to it.

It looked nothing like it had. With the pieces piled in the case, not even the shape was recognizable. With the paintjob, it was hard to even follow the contour of the different pieces, never mind recognizing them; it was only when Ash took one out and put it against the white backdrop of the wall that it was easy to see them. Very nice.

She grumbled and dropped the piece back in the case. I guessed that was as much approval as I was going to get from her. When she turned to look at me she looked... I couldn't quite put the word to it. She was giving me this look, like she was sizing me up, and I couldn't quite tell whether she was going to punch me in the face, or rip my clothes off.

"Take those off," she finally said, pointing at my chest.

_Guess that answers that._

"Excuse me?''

Her thumb pointed at the suit. "Get dressed, we're starting right now." She had what I came to identify as her _Gunnery Chief_ face. As the gunny, she was in charge of keeping her unit's combat readiness top notch, and that included not just the guns they used, but also the people who used them. I didn't learn this until later, however. "You _did_ remember to bring your undersuit this time, didn't you?"

"Uh..." Yeah, real smooth there.

"You have two minutes," she replied, bringing her omni-tool up and setting a countdown. That got an amused chuckle from Serrus, who was looking at the proceedings with great interest.

"That's twice regulation time for the Alliance," he said, making a turian grin, with his mandibles clicking in amusement. Jeez, he was _just_ a shopkeeper, wasn't he? "Changing rooms are that way."

It was enough to get me out of my Trance of Stupidity™ and kick my brain into gear. I grabbed the case, rushed to the back of the shop, and got into one of the stalls. Let me tell you, it was much narrower than the cargo bay of the Normandy, and putting armor on while on the clock? Yeah. I needed a LOT more room. I banged on the stall walls and shook the thing like I was in the toilet of a plane joining the mile high club. By myself.

Yeah, not very dignified.

When I finally made it out, having left my clothes inside the armor case, I was already sweating, with the armor's thermo-regulator whirring into life. But at least the visor of my helmet was showing all green. When I got to the front of the shop, Ash didn't look impressed.

"Four minutes and twenty-three seconds. You owe me one hundred and forty-three push-ups."

"What?" I replied. Apparently, my brain had stalled again.

"His translator is broken," Serrus said.

"No, it's really that bad by design," Ash replied. "His brain, I mean," she added afterwards, making Serrus laugh.

_Great._

"One hundred and forty-three. Now!"

I was down on my face before I knew what I was doing, but the worst part was that I couldn't do one hundred and forty-three push-ups in one go. I managed thirty, which given the extra weight from the armor I thought was pretty damn good.

Ash wasn't impressed.

"Don't think you're done, I'll have my push-ups before we're done today."

_Dammit_.

I only stared at her, but she didn't seem to care. She just kept talking, while I got back to my feet.

"All right Roy, since you seem to have trouble following orders, and since all the commander has given me to work with is you and a week of training, listen up. This is what's going to happen. One point eight three miles from here there's a training range used by the Alliance. We're going to run there, then we're going to run drills for the next ten hours, or until you die of exhaustion, whatever comes first. Any questions?"

"Uh... yes, wh-"

"If you have time for questions," she interrupted me, "then you have time for running. Move it!"

* * *

><p>Have you ever been chased by a rabid pitbull? I haven't either, but I can imagine it being a slightly nicer experience than being chased by Ash, while wearing her gunnery chief face. She kept yelling at me, pushing me whenever it looked like I was about to slow down, and even shot me once when I stopped completely – her reasoning was that the only time you stop like that in combat was when a bullet had found its way to you, so I should better get used to the feeling – and altogether made the trip as much a run for my life as she possibly could.<p>

Or so I thought. As I found out later, she made it as close to a run for my life as she could... _while in the lawful confines of the Citadel_. It turned out that the range was _technically_ Alliance territory, and while they still had to conform to certain galactic agreements regarding the treatment of civilians, she could get away with a lot more.

"That was pathetic!" Ash shouted at me as soon as we arrived, and I pretty much collapsed on my knees. Meanwhile, she wasn't even sweating. "A run of that distance should have taken eight minutes!"

"The freaking armor... is heavy..." I complained between big mouthfuls of air.

"Of course it is! If you weren't wearing it, you should have done it in seven minutes!"

I checked my omni-tool. The run had taken twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds, which I thought was pretty damn good. What the hell did the Alliance put in their marines' weetbix? Radioactive spider juice? I saw that the place we were at looked a bit like a lobby, with only a handful of people milling about, all of them looking at me. There were seats like it was the waiting area of an airport, and several holographic screens showing different courses that reminded me of indoors paintball. Without the slippery paint – or so I hoped.

"Tsk, tsk, put yourself together. I'm going to talk to the range master."

I nodded and watched her leave, her strides strong and purposeful. And call me paranoid (again), but I thought I saw a very noticeable glint in her eye. Not quite enjoyment, or amusement, but something close. Which made me worry.

By the time she was back I had managed to get to my feet, and get my breathing under control. She was sporting a harness, with her pistol holstered on her side and an assault rifle on her back. I knew she had been wearing a shielding harness – Shepard doesn't like anyone in her team venturing out without guns or protection – but that looked more bulky.

"We've got a basic course, which I have tweaked a bit for _your _benefit," Ash said, and once again I saw that worrying glint in her eye. "You're going to have to learn to walk and run at the same time, so pay attention. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am," I said, standing straight.

"Good, but before that..."

"Huh?"

"Push-ups."

I blinked a couple of times. "What? Now?"

"Right. Now." She emphasized every word, and pointed at the ground. Right in the middle of the lobby too.

With a muttered curse, I got to my face and started again. Twenty-three this time. Shit, the armor was freaking heavy. Luckily, it seemed like an officer ordering someone to do push-ups was a daily occurrence over there, because I didn't get any strange looks.

Once I was done, and couldn't do a single push-up more, Ashley gave me a look of disappointment – again – and just gestured for me to stand up.

"Come on. Follow my lead."

She led me to one of the large doors at the back, and I caught over the corner of my eye how the few people that were hanging out there congregated in front of one of the screens.

_Sweet. I'm going to make a fool of myself in front of an audience. More than I already have._

Ash stopped, raised her hand in a fist – in a gesture that could only be for me to stop – and pulled her pistol out. I was about to do the same, but she turned to look at me, shook her head, and pointed at my shotgun.

Without another word, she kicked the door and we both rushed in.

The place looked a lot like an obstacle course, with debris simulating urban warfare terrain, and as soon as we stepped inside, a veritable army of holographic targets sprang to life. They were all just shaped like LOKI mechs, which I suppose is cheaper than using real ones if the people using the range were going to just shoot them.

Which reminded me, we had live ammo in our guns. That was _slightly_ worrying.

Ash found cover in a millisecond, whereas I had a couple of holographic rounds ping off my shield before I really started to move. I sprinted as fast as I could towards what looked like the remains of a Mako, and hid behind them. To my surprise, the two holographic rounds had taken a noticeable chunk off my first layer of shields.

"Sloppy," Ash's voice came through the comms; dry, but less harsh than I had expected. "You don't have time to stand there awestruck when the bullets are flying, kid."

"Sorry."

"If you have time to be sorry, you have time to shoot," Ash replied.

I heard her gun going off as she spoke, with the response from the holographic mechs close behind. I popped out of cover, shotgun in hand, and spent a second taking stock of the situation. Lots of mechs, slowly advancing towards our positions. I chose one close by, and let the shotgun rip. It felt perfect, even better than it had in the range at Serrus'. The spread was narrow, just how I liked it, it tracked targets just perfectly, and the kick was just enough to let me re-target within a fraction of a second.

A second shot, and the hologram flickered and disappeared. I aimed again, then changed target to a closer mech, but after just one shot I was forced back into cover. The bullets had ground through my first layer of shields, and the second took only one shot to nearly shatter.

It was really strange; I felt no feedback from the bullets, but they were chewing through my shield like nobody's business.

Ash landed into cover next to me a moment later.

"Are you even taking this seriously?" she spat out, giving me a sideways look as she kept a lookout.

"Of course I am!"

"Then stop wasting time! When you come out of cover, you need to choose targets fast, have the next ones lined up even before you fire on the first one. Like this!" And in saying that, she popped out of cover and started shooting with her pistol.

She really didn't waste any time. The shooting started so quickly after she popped out that the only reason I saw her assessing the battle was that I had been expecting it. She fired on the first one, and I saw her eyes darting left and right for a tiny fraction of a second a few times. She shot four times, the holographic mech went down, and the fifth shot was straight onto a different one. Damn, she was _good_.

I jumped out – as my shields were showing a full charge – and tried to follow suit. Shooting quickly at the first target, while trying to find a second. The fact of the matter was that a shotgun gave considerably more leverage when it came to loose aim while looking somewhere else looking for targets, so I chose the next mech pretty fast.

Only to see it disappear in a shower of holographic sparks.

_Friggin' hell Ash!_

A quick glance at her showed me that, while she was still concentrating on the targets, she was smirking. Smartass. I went for another mech, and after taking it down, my next two targets were scooped by Ash.

I was so caught up by the annoyance, and the fact that Ash seemed to be goading me, that I completely missed how my shields had been going down steadily, and how the last bullet had completely taken the second layer.

Which meant there was nothing between me and the electric round that hit me on the back, and dropped me as ten thousand volts of pain coursed through my body.

Tell you the truth, I had never been tasered before, and I can't imagine it being any more pleasant than that. I blubbered nonsense as I fell to the ground, something between a grunt and a shout, and didn't even hear Ash calling the exercise off. When I was finally done spazing – without any wardrobe malfunctions, I might add – I saw Ash was looking down at me, and the satisfied smile I had been expecting to be on her face simply wasn't there.

She looked pissed. _Very _pissed.

"You're dead," she deadpanned.

"That... fucking hurt..." I muttered in response. "What the hell is wrong with the Alliance dammit?"

It was as if she hadn't heard me. "Do you still think this is a joke? I'm not going to be wasting my bloody time training some good-for-nothing kid if he's just going to go out and get killed again!" she shouted.

Maybe it was that I wasn't paying attention to the rest of the rant she was shouting at me, or maybe it was my brain finally making a worthwhile connection despite my usual less than stellar performances, but the last word stuck in my head.

"_Again_?" I said, emphasizing the word.

Ash was thrown off by the question, more so as it looked like she hadn't realized what she had been saying. She recovered quickly, and put her gunnery chief face back on. She grabbed me by the collar of the armor, and in one mighty pull had me back on my feet.

"From the beginning!" she shouted, to me and apparently to the air. She dragged me to the entrance, and the holographic battle reset once more. We lined up by the entrance, she gestured up with her fist, all without her looking at me, and we were off again.

This time I was more careful, keeping a constant eye on my shield gauge. I also realized the shields were not being taken down by the holographic shots, but rather by a system of lasers covering the entire course. Whenever a holographic round hit, they'd take a chunk off my shields with a single pulse. And when the shields were down, they'd shoot the electric round at me to take me down. There was no possible cover from the wall-mounted guns, which kind of was the point.

All this looking around had the unfortunate side effect of being much too slow, and we ended up overwhelmed by the mechs. Ash fought her corner well, but I was mercilessly gunned down.

Which, once again, ended up with me having a fit on the ground.

"What the hell went wrong this time?" Ashley shouted as soon as I was presentable.

"There were too many..." I grumbled.

"Because you weren't shooting them!" She gestured at the now empty battlefield. "You can't just hide and hope they don't find you! You have to go out there and shoot them!" She looked up, and this time I had to get on my feet by myself. "From the beginning!"

Those three words I came to loathe in a very short time.

_From the beginning_.

* * *

><p>It took nearly two hours until we cleared the exercise without me having a spatz, and by then I could barely stand. I though I would at least get a rest, having long given up on seeing any encouragement from Ashley, but instead, what I got was an introduction to the amazing effects of twenty-second century stims. Ash took a pack out of her pocket, slotted it into the medi-gel dispenser of my armor's medical interface, and gave me a jolt.<p>

"Holy shit!" I shouted, I jumped on my feet like someone had stuck a ghost chilly up my rear end, with my heart beating hard against my ribs, full-on flight-or-flight mode engaged like nothing I had ever experienced. Not even while being shot at by the geth. "What the hell did you do?!"

"Manly juice," she replied, flashing a smirk for a moment. "Now, back to the entrance, we ain't done. Not by a long shot. And save your water," she cut right as I was taking a sip with trembling hands. "That's all the water you have till we're done."

"W-What?" I spluttered, coughing up as the single sip went down the wrong way.

"You don't get full catering in a warzone, kid. That's all the water you'll carry during missions. Take a cup of harden the fuck up and let's go."

And so, we took it away. From the beginning.

We had made it into the Citadel pretty early during the day. Well, the "_day_". Meetings and assorted shopping aside, Ash and I had pretty much spent the whole friggin' day shooting holograms. I had gone through three loads of stims, which apparently was about as much as I could take in one day, and run the gauntlet so many times I had stopped counting.

And so, it was about an hour before we had to go back to the Normandy, and I was just _done. _I probably could have given myself another jolt of stims, but it was both inadvisable, and unnecessary.

"Well, that was pathetic," Ash said. We were in the locker room, where I was supposed to be taking my armor off, but all I could manage was to sit on the bench and try to put myself together. She, on the other hand, had just finished showering and getting changed, because she had been sweating _a little_.

Emphasis on _little_.

_What the hell is this woman made of?_

"I didn't think I was that bad," I said. "I was getting the hang of it."

"Yeah, if by getting the hang of it you mean finally managed to complete the course, a course, I might add, made to be cleared by a _single _marine, in a scrappy way and barely avoiding getting killed," she replied sarcastically.

"Again," I added.

She glared at me, and threw her wet towel at my face, which took me completely by surprise. That surprise, plus my lack of energy, ended up with me dropping flat to the ground.

"Make sure you get to the Normandy on time," Ash shot as she walked off.

I pulled the towel just in time to see her disappear out the door. She was definitely walking with a purpose, and an angry one at that. I guessed it was starting to make sense, maybe Shepard was right and she wasn't exactly angry _at_ me, though I seemed to have a knack for pissing her off. I wondered who it was, that kid she had trained and had gotten killed. Someone from the 212, or the militia? I had no idea, and I wasn't inclined to ask.

Well, I had one week to change her mind about me. And I didn't care what she said, I thought I had done pretty good. Despite the apparent sadism of whoever designed that fucking course. Seriously, electric shocks?

I groaned and got to my feet, slowly. I had the nagging feeling I was forgetting something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what. Well, maybe after a shower I'd be able to think more clearly. I was pretty sure I stank to high heaven under the armor; even though it was supposed to be thermo-regulated, I felt several places where I was soaked in sweat.

All in all, not a bad day. The only weird thing was that I had thrown a wrench into Shepard's nomination to the Spectres. Mostly because Nihlus survived. I had no doubt Shepard would be made a Spectre when all was said and done. Originally, she was supposed to have been made right after Eden Prime, just to throw humanity a bone and to have her go after Saren without any "official" support. Well, in-game it happened after some side questing all through the Citadel, and getting-

My train of thought came to a screeching halt when I realized what it was I had been missing. I'm talking train carts flying, people screaming, rails snapping, the whole nine yards.

Tali.

_Shit. SHIT! **SHIT!**_

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>You _did_ realize what it was I was missing, didn't you? She's only the most popular Mass Effect squad member - well, after Garrus, who, whoops, I forgot about too.

Oh, and it turns out that Ash isn't just a bitch. Who'd have thought?

**Mizuki00**, thanks! And I should probably say, sorry about the cliffhanger regarding Tali :-O

**RandomExplorer, **haha! Didn't think of that, maybe Roy should be joining the Blue Suns or something instead! Get an eyepatch and a taste for rum. As far as consequences, there _will_ be consequences to Roy's loose lips. Oh yes there will be.

**Archer83, **worry not, Roy will keep testing the limits of the AI overlord, don't think he'll be able to get away with much more of this! And thanks :D

In our next episode! Will Garrus show up or not? Will Tali be making an appearance? Will Roy miss another meal? Tune in to My Effect: Convergence to find out! Tell your friends and family, and thank you for reading and/or reviewing! :D


	7. Chapter 7

Tali. I had screwed up... _everything_. I got in the way of Shepard going off to find Tali, Garrus, Wrex, the whole lot. And all the rest of the things that were supposed to happen in the Citadel.

I didn't even think about it. I hit the stims on my suit and took off at full speed, clipping the weapons to the armor as I went. The chemicals revved me up to a million rpms, and my head felt like a thousand different ideas were trying to rip my brain apart. I held the guns in place with trembling hands, having trouble making the magclip put them where they were supposed to, and just ran like a bat out of hell.

_No fucking way. She's alive_, I thought as I ran. Less than two miles to the markets, and the clinic. That was the place to start, there was no way she was still at the back alley. If the clinic had no clues, I could run from there to Chora's den. _Saren's got no reason to kill her now. She's going to be fine._

I was supposed to make the run in eight minutes, and Ash had chewed me up for doing it in over twelve. Thanks to the wonders of modern stims, I had made it in just over ten minutes, only I was out of breath, in pain, and my hands were trembling so much I could hardly grab my gun. I took a left once I rushed up the stairs to the market, and found the sign pointing at the clinic. At least I hoped I had found the right clinic, or I'd probably make an ass of myself and give someone a freaking heart attack.

Stopping in front of the door I tried to calm my breathing down, took the shotgun in my hands and, pointing down but ready to aim it, I hit the door.

It opened with a low hiss, to reveal a small room not unlike the clinic found in the game. A lobby, with a counter, and some beds and medical equipment behind, with pulled back curtains around them. There was a medigel dispenser to the left, which looked just like the one aboard the Normandy.

I could make all these observations because I didn't have to start shooting at anyone. The place was completely deserted. I still kept my grip on the gun, and my brain on hair trigger in case anything jumped at me – I've played enough games to know how it works – but nothing. I made my way slowly to the counter, keeping my eyes peeled.

The blood was the first thing I saw, before I saw the body. Blue blood, a large pool. The smell had been bothering me for a while, but I couldn't tell that it was the smell of turian blood. Then, I saw the owner.

The visor, the armor, it was unmistakable.

"Garrus!" I shouted, coming quickly to kneel next to him.

To my infinite relief, he was alive, but barely breathing. I fired up the omni-tool, and found the medical app – standard Alliance issue, if you must know – and the VI showed me the scan, and how he was in seriously bad shape. Three holes, loss of blood... I followed the instructions and filled them up as best I could with medi-gel, which seemed to wake him up.

He grunted something I couldn't understand. Oh great, no translator.

"Look, I don't have a clue what you're saying. Just stay here, okay? I'll send help."

I was about to stand up, but he grabbed my arm, forcing me close. He grunted something else, but I just shook my head and pulled myself free. Not that he put much of a fight. I fired up a message to C-sec and took off again, leaving a trail of blue footprints as I ran towards Chora's Den. All the while cursing to myself for having to leave Garrus behind. In fact, it was the stims that let me do that. Had I had a clear head, I would have probably just frozen in place, and waited for C-sec to arrive.

Instead, I ran.

_God fucking dammit! I can't fucking believe this!_

Finding the small alley next to Chora's Den was easy, specially because I ran right through it. The place was a mess, there were bullet holes, remains of explosions, and even a pool of acid that had eaten through the ground, with two keepers apparently _drinking_ it.

The smell was pretty damn disgusting.

More important than any of that was the fact that Tali was gone. No body left there, they probably kidnapped her. That was good – relatively – as it meant she was still alive. If she was anywhere in the Citadel, then I had to find her. And I knew exactly who was going to tell me.

* * *

><p>Chora's Den was supposed to have been assaulted by Shepard, in-game at least. So I was expecting it to be standing, and I was already trying to figure out how exactly I was going to get my ass into Fist's office. However, I had forgotten one important detail. The Shadow Broker had put a hit on Fist. And the one who had been sent to collect was a certain krogan.<p>

I heard Wrex's bellows before I even heard his gun, and it wasn't because his enormous shotgun was nice and quiet. He was obviously having a grand old time in there, and the shouts of Fist's thugs let me know they weren't. I got to the entrance, remembered Ashley's very first lesson – _keep your damn head down! – _and peeked. Wrex and the krogan bouncer were going at it, and another one of Fist's guards was getting out of cover aiming at them.

My shotgun was up to my shoulder before I knew it, but then I froze. That was an actual person there, not a geth – which, even though I knew what I knew about Legion, was easier to think of in the abstract – or a holographic target. Did I really have it in me to-

***KA-BLAMMO!***

Yeah, my gun went off as soon as the guy saw me and turned to aim at me. Or maybe he was just turning to have a better look. I didn't really know. Regardless, his shields flared hard, and I pumped the shotgun and fired again (if you're wondering why pump a mass effect-propelled shotgun, it's to open the vents for forceful cooling; now you know). The second shot went through and I saw a splatter of blood behind him as he went down.

I would have started thinking about it, but that had gotten the attention of the few of Fist's men that remained. The last hours of torture – I mean, training – and the stims took over, and I moved in, shooting targets and moving from cover to cover, trying to follow every bit of advice Ash had given me. Luckily for me, Fist must have been one cheap bastard, because the guards he had hired were almost as useless in real combat as I was. Just a bunch of thugs without real training. At least most of them.

Maybe not the turians. Damn turians. Wait, that sounded racist. Well, specieist. I just mean I was jealous of how they all had military training, because it'd have been handy as hell for me.

"Wrex! I'm here for Fist! Don't kill him yet, I need information!"

A blast from a shotgun forced me to go in deeper into the bar, looking for cover. Chora's Den was actually almost exactly like what it looked like in the games, so there wasn't an awful lot of places to hide. Round bar in the middle with a holographic platform above, small tables scattered along the walls. But that worked both ways; the thugs didn't have much cover either, and my gear turned out to be _much _better than the cheap crap the guards were wearing. Apparently, even if you're guarding a small-time crime boss, the gear you can get as a poorly paid civilian doesn't compare to the military grade stuff one can get from the Alliance and a turian shopkeeper with connections to the Spectres.

That freaking shopkeeper.

Meanwhile, Wrex was bellowing something, which really didn't do me any good.

"Oh, and I don't have a translator Wrex! So if you can shout in English that'd be grand!"

Yeah, I _really_ know how to make a first impression. By then the guards were down to two, hiding at the very back of the room, and both Wrex and I were coming for them from opposite ends of the bar. Wrex aimed his shotgun at me as soon as he saw me, and idiot me, instead of taking cover or anything, just dropped my shotgun and raised my hands. Not like a monkey, shooting them over my head. Just, you know, in front of my face. I didn't want to get shot in the face. I like my face lead-free.

"Wait, wait! I'm not with them! I told you, I'm here for Fist!"

"Out of my way pyjak," Wrex said, and he sounded just like he did in the games. Yeah, that was my favourite voice, I remembered it well. Only, it was a lot better when it didn't come from a HUGE krogan aiming his equally enormous shotgun at me. "Fist is mine. Start running and I may let you live."

"Hey, knock yourself out, he's all yours. I just need a minute with him."

"You have a death wish?"

"No, but I have to find Tali." I lowered my hands slightly, to be able to look at him. And regretted immediately, because he had gotten closer, and was completely ignoring the two remaining guards, who were trying to pelt him with mass accelerated rounds.

Distractedly, he aimed the shotgun with one hand to the side, and let loose several volleys in the general direction of the guards. There were shouts, and then groans, but he never stopped looking at me.

"I said run," Wrex insisted, aiming the shotgun at me again.

Problem. At this point, if what I knew of Wrex was right, I was probably going to get shot, specially if I showed weakness and ran. Unless I managed to somewhat convince him that I was on his side, or that I was useful to him. Moreover, he was a krogan. So yeah, no chance I'd live if I backed down; I had some minute chance if I didn't.

_I love my life._

"I'm not running." Was my voice always this high pitched? Shit. Wait, brainwave! "I _need_ Fist. I have to find that quarian before Saren."

Wrex had a history with Saren, didn't he? I saw that my hands were trembling, half because I was tired, half because I was about to crap my pants, half because of the overuse of stims, half because I was too nervous to do proper maths.

"Hmph. And how do you know who I am?"

"Well..." _Think fast, think fast! _"Let's see. The quarian was here to make a deal with the Shadow Broker, Saren's men got to her instead, now a massive krogan with a very distinctive scar is here... Let's put two and two together."

Reading that, it sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? Trust me, if you had heard how it had come out, you wouldn't be impressed at all. That is, assuming you're impressed now. Anyway, lucky for me, it seemed to do the trick with Wrex. He's probably used to people turning into a blubbering mess when talking to him.

Did I mention the huge shotgun? Because that's all I could see, and it was moving, back and forth.

_Wait a minute._

"You go in first," Wrex finally said. Yep, he was gesturing at me with the gun.

I tried not to look too relieved when I picked up my shotgun, and walked on ahead towards the last two guards. They had gotten into cover behind a bar table which, unlike in the games, was _not_ bulletproof. Wrex's shotgun had done a real number of them.

All I did was take their guns, which really was enough given how they were twitching, and clipped them to the back of my armor. Piece of crap assault rifles, but hey, now they were unarmed and I had free guns. I got to the side of the door, opened it, and found... nothing.

_Huh. I didn't expect that._

I was still careful as I made my way in, checking every corner and possible cover. I was exceedingly paranoid, and not in the mood for any surprises, despite the fact that I was in quite a hurry. We got to the last door, where I knew Fist was.

"Okay," I said, turning to Wrex. He was looking at me with what appeared to be an amused grin on his face. "Fist's got a couple of turrets in his office, if we rush him we may get to him before he activates them."

Wrex started laughing at that, a deep and not particularly loud rumble. "After you, pyjak. Show old Wrex here how it's done."

You know what? I was pretty sure he was having a laugh at my expense, but on the other hand, my sense of survival was stronger than my sense of outrage, so I didn't complain. Because I like making up senses, sue me.

"All right, here we go."

I took a moment to get another hit of stims, which put me at five for the day, and _way _over the recommended limit. The effect was immediate, and my heart suddenly leapt in my chest. The first moment had my hands trembling something fierce, but I gripped the shotgun harder and the trembling subdued.

"A little liquid courage?" Wrex said, and he didn't sound impressed at all.

"I've had a long day," I retorted, annoyed. Oh yeah, side effect, suddenly – and stupidly – I wasn't as intimidated by Wrex. "They're the only thing keeping me on my feet. Come on!"

I hit the door release, and rushed in as fast as I could.

"Do I have to do everyth-"

I didn't even let Fist finish. I was unloading on him as soon as I saw him, the shotgun hitting his arm and side repeatedly even as he had started up his omni-tool. Unfortunately, activating the turrets didn't seem to need much fiddling, so they popped out while I was halfway through my rush.

Stupidity, stims, or pure dumb luck saved me. Instead of stopping and trying to get into cover, which would have likely ended up with me being torn to ribbons, I pushed on, going straight for Fist.

I think he looked surprised. The turrets tracked me and started shooting, and I felt the impacts on my shields something fierce. They lasted enough, breaking as I crashed on the very confused Fist. Fortunately, I wasn't alone, and Wrex made short work of the first turret while I scrambled to get to my knees and put my shotgun on Fist's face. And Fist between me and the other turret.

"STOP THEM!" I shouted, Holy crap, I didn't even realize I could shout like that. Go stims. Twenty-second century chemistry rocks. "RIGHT NOW!"

"Okay, okay, let me-"

The second turret exploded even before Fist could open his omni-tool, and a grinning Wrex walked in, hissing shotgun in his hands and a toothy grin on his face.

"No need for that," he said, and started laughing when Fist looked at him like he was about to soil his pants. "Does it hurt pyjak?" he said, addressing me.

I didn't know what he was talking about until he gestured at my left arm. There was a hole in the armor, and some blood.

"No," I deadpanned, and turned to Fist. "Where is Tali?"

"W-Who?"

"TALI! The quarian you double crossed, you useless piece of shit! Where is she!"

"I-I don't know! I swear! I-"

"There you go," Wrex said, levelling his gun at Fist. "He doesn't know. Get out of the way."

"AAAAH! I swear! I-I don't know!"

"Bullshit!" I shouted, shoving my gun to his face. As in, digging in his cheek with the barrel. He shouted, and I heard a hissing sound as the overheated metal touched his skin. "You sold her out to Saren! Where did they take her!"

"I- I don't know! B-But I know Saren has a private dock!"

"WHERE?"

"I-In the lower docks in this ward! It's... um... wait..." He reached for his omni-tool, only to have Wrex walk in closer and shove the oversized shotgun into his face, and me press mine deeper into his cheek, which made him look real funny.

And have a small little accident, if the smell was anything to go by.

"Don't do anything stupid," I deadpanned.

"N-No, not... at... no! I just want to..." Very slowly, he brought up his omni-tool, and typed a few commands. A message appeared. "Here! Dock 216, on level 137."

"Thanks," I said in a low voice. I stood up and started to walk out, but Wrex stopped me.

"Where are you going? Going to kill Saren's men all by yourself?"

_Good point._

"Not exactly," I said, and brought my omni-tool up. A few clicks later, and Ashley was on the line.

"Roy? Where the hell are you? You're late!"

"Ash! Listen, I-"

***KA-BLAMMO!***

That was Wrex. Fist didn't make a sound as he died, and I didn't think of turning back to look. No need, really.

"What the hell was that?" Ashley shouted. "Where are you?"

"Listen! Saren's kidnapped a quarian that has some info on him, we have to stop them! Dock 216 on level 137, tell Shepard and hurry up!"

"What? Roy, if you're-"

"Dammit Ash! Hurry!"

I closed the link and looked up to see Wrex looking at me.

"Shepard?"

"Yeah. We're after Saren, if you want to stick around."

Wrex's rumbling laugh wasn't unexpected, but his reply was. Well, sort of.

"And why would I want to work with you, weakling?"

"_Me_?" I said, genuinely surprised. "No reason, but wait till you meet the commander. Come on!"

I was still feeling pretty hyper, thanks to the wonders of stims, and the medical interface seemed to have done its job with my arm, because it really didn't hurt at all. I checked my shotgun, and took off towards the exit.

Only to run into half a dozen people aiming their guns at me.

Yeah, I had totally forgotten about those assholes. Whoopsie.

"Kill him!"

I skidded to a stop, scrambled back, all while my shields were being depleted at an alarming rate. The first layer broke while I was still pedalling back, and the second one as I dove past the corner into cover. I felt impacts on my back, and one of them cracked something on my right shoulder blade. The jolt of pain hurt worse than the freaking shocks I got during training, but at least it was short lived. I managed not to scream in pain, and after a few seconds the pain started to dull away as the medi-gel kicked in.

It also made the world stop spinning in front of my eyes. Medi-gel is freaking awesome.

"Shit. Son of a-"

"Hah! Gotcha!"

I looked up, and saw that one of the fucking thugs had made his way to me. He levelled his assault rifle at me, just as I was trying to scramble to grab my shotgun, and the awful realization that I wasn't going to make it hit me like a ton of bricks. If it weren't for the stims, I'm sure my heart would have sped up in fear. As it was, it was already going at a million revs a minute, so hey.

The moment broke with an enormous report, and a splash of blood getting all over me as the guy simply disappeared from view, thrown out of the back room. A second shot followed, and I saw Wrex casually walking in and unloading.

"You sure you're with Shepard, pyjak?" he said, not even giving me a glance.

"Yeah," I muttered. "At least for now."

_Fuck my life._

My shoulder still hurt when I moved my arm, and worse still, it felt like something rasping against my shoulderblade, which made me feel slightly dizzy. I knew medi-gel was dulling it all, so I decided to go for it while I could.

_After_ the shields recharged.

It didn't take too long for them to do so, but by the time I Was out, Wrex had done a number on the thugs. There were only two left.

***KA-BLAMMO***

Make that one left. I raised my own shotgun, and the last thug simply dropped his gun and raised his hands.

"Get the hell out of here," I said, gesturing with my shotgun towards the door.

He looked at Wrex, at me, nodded vigorously, and rushed out. I saw out of the corner of my eye how Wrex trailed him with his shotgun, but luckily he didn't shoot.

"Hmph, pointless. Would've been easier to kill 'im."

"Eh, violence solves more problems than anything else, but not everything," I replied, bastardizing the quote slightly. To be honest, I was shocked that Wrex was doing anything I suggested, but I got the feeling he was just amused at my antics. I hoped it was because he wanted to meet Shepard, which at least would give me a bit of leeway.

I rushed out of Chora's Den, making a beeline for the rapid transport terminal. I called one, jumped in, and then nearly fell on my face when Wrex jumped in behind me, and the whole thing tilted like it was going to flip.

"Bloody hell!" I shouted, barely managing to avoid faceplanting Wrex's hump.

The shuttle bounced off the ground, stabilized and, thankfully, although it was tilting rather noticeably, it stayed up.

"What are you waiting for?" Wrex said. "You're the one who was in a hurry."

" Dock 216 on level 137!" I – needlessly – shouted, and immediately the door to the shuttle closed, and took off at the same infernal speed I was never going to get accustomed to.

The worst part is that, this time, the freaking shuttle was tilted, and apparently Avina didn't give a flying headcrab about it. Instead of skimming the obstacles, we were banging against them as we flew. We hit other shuttles, scraped against buildings, knocked antennas down, and all the while, Wrex was laughing like a supervillain.

I was screaming my head out, calling the stupid VI every freaking name in the book. And a few I just made up on the spot.

As usual, the trip was short, even though it felt like it was never going to end – or it was going to, together with my life – and soon we were rolling through what looked like rows and rows of small docks, several of them with private ships of various designs I couldn't recognize.

"Jump," Wrex suddenly said.

"What?"

He raised his shotgun, blew the door open, and looked at me.

"Rocket," he deadpanned, and jumped out. Just in time to unblock the view of the front window, where I could see a glowing thing rapidly approaching from the front.

I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could which, given how the shuttle was rocking after losing about a million pounds worth of krogan, wasn't particularly fast, and jumped out of the transport without even looking at where I was going to land. Almost as soon as I did, the rocket hit the shuttle, and a large explosion engulfed it. My shields blared like crazy, as I lost the first layer almost instantly, but the second layer seemed to hold.

That was all the time I had in the crazy ride, because I just put my hands behind the back of my head, curled up as best as I could, and landed at an angle on the hard floor, rolling like crazy for an eternity and a half.

If you're thinking it hurt like being an ice cube put in a blender to prepare a margarita, there's something really weird about you. But it did hurt, _a lot_, and when I finally crashed on a wall, I felt a definite _crunch_ on my side, which was about all I had the presence of mind to notice.

I didn't even know what the hell had happened, or where I was, or why my entire body hurt like I was on fire. It wasn't until the medi-gel, sweet, sweet medi-gel, kicked in that I started to get my bearings back. I was dimly aware of a distant beeping, which turned out to be an alert from my suit.

* * *

><p>MEDI-GEL RESERVES DEPLETED<p>

* * *

><p><em>Fuck.<em>

I groaned as I got to my feet, only to get knocked down by a couple of bullets hitting my newly recharged shields.

_Double fuck!_

Crawling to better cover, groaning as every move hurt, I managed to prop myself behind a heavy cargo crate. I leaned out of cover very quickly, and jumped back even as bullets pelted my position.

There were LOADS of targets. At least a dozen turians and salarians mixed up. I scrambled to the opposite end of the crate, and none too fast as a thick round exploded through the metal, shooting shrapnel left and right, and off my shields.

One layer down, and I hadn't even gotten out of cover.

"Fucking hell," I muttered, finally patting myself down and finding my shotgun. I grabbed a large piece of debris, threw it to the side, and aimed out of cover from the other, already searching a target.

The distraction only worked for a moment, but it was enough. I zeroed on a close salarian right in front of me, unloaded a couple of shots that downed him – although I didn't see any blood, may have been just his shields – and was already looking for my second target. Which turned out to be a turian that was sprinting at me at full speed.

Let me tell you something right now. Turians are _fucking fast!_

More shots landed around me, although luckily the turian rushing me was covering some of the angle. I fired two more shots, ignoring the beeping of my barrier as it neared depletion, but he wasn't stopping, only slowing down.

He only stopped when a carnage shot from Wrex hit him square on the head, making it explode in a shower of gore and blood. Blue blood.

_Bloody hell._

Another shot cracked through my barrier and dented the plate on my shoulder, forcing me back in cover. I could hear the screams coming from Saren's men – if they were indeed Saren's men, and not a bunch of idiots who happened to pick a fight with none other than Urdnot Wrex – but I couldn't understand a thing they were saying.

"You still alive, pyjak?" I heard Wrex shout.

"No!" I replied. Bad idea, I had to dig down and roll out of the way as more shots shredded the still standing side of the crate. I was fast running out of places to hide, because they were chewing through both ends of the crate.

_Goddammit! The fucking crates were supposed to be bulletproof!_

All the swearing in the world couldn't make up for the fact that my cover was getting shredded, and I was still waiting for my shields to recharge. A harder shot blew up what was left of the crate, barely missing me as I was laying down on the ground.

Then, my shields finally started recharging.

"About time! Some cover Wrex!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet even as I ran towards the next bit of cover. A thick vertical structural beam in between docks.

Whether I was lucky or Wrex actually gave me some cover, I didn't know. It was absolute chaos, and for what I could tell, the krogan's shotgun hadn't stopped firing ever since the fight started. Several rounds hit my shields, but I managed to stay on my feet and get behind the beam.

I couldn't just keep hiding, so as soon as I was there, I made a show of peeking around the opposite end of the beam, then quickly turn and start shooting from the end I got into.

The target rich environment was a little less rich. I followed where Wrex was shooting easily enough, and added my own gun's ordinance to his. This time, I managed to draw blood, and one of the turians went down hard.

As in down the dock, and into space. Well, empty space below, not space-space.

_Damn, I better watch my step._

A bullet brought me back to the present, and forced me into cover. Dammit, newbie mistake again, getting distracted by something shiny. I took a deep breath and went out to shoot again, only for a sniper shot to knock me on my ass. And punch through _two _layers of shields, to end up embedded into one of the ceramic plates on my chest.

_Fuck my life! Get up, get up!_

I scrambled up, bullets falling around me as I tried to get back in cover, until suddenly I saw the head of one of the turians snap to the side as half of it was blown off.

"Booyah!" I heard through the comms.

"… Shepard?"

"How many times do we have to tell you to keep your head down?" was her answer, punctuated by another sniper rifle shot.

The familiar staccato of the alliance assault rifles immediately filled the air, with Ash and Kaidan following close. Wrex chose that moment to let out a bestial roar, and charge straight towards a clump of mercs. It was like watching a bowling competition, with pins falling left and right – and down the dock to certain doom, after Wrex punched them right _through _the guardrails. I clipped the shotgun to my back, unholstered my pistol, and started adding my shots to the mess. Couldn't risk the spread of the shotgun with friendlies so close.

By the time Nihlus popped out of nowhere on the opposite side of the dock, the mercs were down to only four turians, and they fought to their deaths. Mostly because Wrex was the one to catch up to them first.

_Damn, these people are good._

"You can come out now Roy," Shepard called, once the shooting was over. She was standing with Wrex and Nihlus surveying the remains of the battle, but turned to me and waved me on. Could be me, but it looked like she wasn't happy at all.

"Wasn't hiding," I muttered, loud enough that the comms picked it up. I stood up on weak, trembling legs, and started walking slowly towards them. I was in so much pain I could hardly walk straight.

"Well... you should," Shepard replied.

I didn't get what she meant until Ash, out of nowhere, appeared right in front of me. She didn't even give me a warning before she punched me right on the face.

Let me tell you, that woman had a _hell _of a right hook. I dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

"You complete bleeding IDIOT!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "What the HELL were you thinking? Blow your bloody brains out yourself if you want to die so badly!"

Between the punch and the thorough beating I had gotten, the receding effects of the medi-gel _and _the stims, and the punch that Ash had just delivered (wait, did I mention that already?), I found that the ground was an excellent place to be. I looked up at Ash as she kept giving me a verbal beating – to complement the physical one nicely – without really listening to what she was saying. Didn't have to, I've heard it all before.

Finally, apparently tired of raging at me with little effect, she revved up for punching me again. I flinched, waiting for the impact, until she called me.

"Roy," she said, and somehow her voice seemed softer than before.

When I looked up, I saw she was simply offering me a hand, and the angry scowl on her face was mostly gone. She looked surprised, more than anything. I was trying, but failing, to connect the dots, but gave up quickly.

_Huh, whatever._

I took the offered hand, and she pulled me up to my feet. She then pulled me towards herself, holding me steady with my arm around her shoulders.

"You're a mess," she said. Was that concern I was hearing? Unlikely, I probably was just tired.

"Sorry," I muttered. "I'll try harder next time."

"There better not bloody be a next time," she retorted as we made our way towards Shepard.

"… 'kay."

I didn't know about stim withdrawal at the time, but I was already starting to feel it. Tiredness and confusion, it was going to be followed by sweats and chills, and a whole lot of throwing up; but at the time I just felt like taking a nap.

As we walked, the rest of the group were going through the fallen mercs; stripping them off valuables or looking for information, I couldn't quite tell.

"Roy," Shepard greeted once Ash and I got there. She turned around, her _majorly pissed __off_ face on, but it seemed to freeze when she laid eyes on me.

"That bad?" I said.

"Worse," she deadpanned.

"Thanks for the rescue anyway," I replied. "Did you find Tali?"

"Who?"

The thought that I had probably screwed up something passed through, but I wasn't in the best state of mind to notice.

"The quarian. Tali... Uh... vas Rayya I think it was?" I wasn't actually pretending, I really couldn't remember her whole freaking name.

"He's not-"

"Commander," Alenko called from inside the transport. "You better get here."

Shepard took off at a brisk pace without even finishing, and I stumbled after her, Ash having let go of me to go help the others search the dead. I managed to stumble into the shuttle too, without losing my footing, but what I saw inside froze me right on the spot.

It was my first time seeing a quarian – outside the game that is. Tali was sprawled on the ground, with Alenko fussing over her, and there was violet blood all over her suit. Given the splash of blood on a nearby crate, I figured that was where they had been transporting her. Shepard was talking on her omni-tool, but I was very actively ignoring her.

"Is she..." I said.

"She's alive," Alenko replied. "For now at least, she-"

That's all I heard. Alenko went on to describe the extent of her wounds, but I just wasn't hearing. I fell back a couple of inches until my back hit the wall, then simply slid down to a sitting position on the floor.

_Thank you. Whoever's watching over her. Thank you._

* * *

><p><strong>Author's notes: <strong>Haha! It was awesome to read the reviews and see how many people had completely forgotten about Tali, Garrus, Wrex, and the whole lot. It worked! \o/

So luck of lucks - which Roy seems to have an awful lot of - everyone made it through. So far.

And yeah, genemods. Somehow everyone's forgetting to tell Roy about them *whistles innocently*

**Archer83**, nothing like the dawn of realization! :D

**Mizuki00, **hah! Did you only realize at the end too, like Roy? :D And I appreciate all reviews, no need to apologize because I thank you for it!

In our next episode! Will all the wounded recover? What's Shepard going to do about this sudden turn of events? Will Roy get breakfast? Tune in to My Effect: Convergence to find out! Thanks everyone for all the great reviews, they really make my day! =)


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